Access the ENCYCLICAL LETTER “MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS” of Pope Leo from here
Pope Leo XIV has issued a sweeping warning about the social, political, and human consequences of artificial intelligence, arguing that societies must urgently decide whether AI will serve humanity or deepen inequality, manipulation, and dehumanisation. In a new encyclical, the Pope said rapid advances in artificial intelligence, robotics and data systems are reshaping daily life, institutions, and global power structures while concentrating control in the hands of a small number of tech companies and economic actors.
AI, Power and Big Tech: The Pope warned that control over “platforms, infrastructure, data, and computing power” is increasingly shifting from governments to “major economic and technological actors.” He cautioned that such concentration of digital power could create “new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations, and inequalities.”
Pope Leo also warned that a small number of powerful groups could use AI to “shape information and consumption patterns, influence democratic processes and steer economic dynamics to their own advantage.” He argued that data “should not be treated as something to be sold off or entrusted to a select few” and called for thinking about data as “a common or shared good.”
On military and geopolitical competition, he called to disarm AI, warning against a global race for “ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets” driven by commercial and geopolitical dominance. “To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity,” he said.
AI and Human Relationships: The Pope said people should not confuse machine intelligence with human intelligence. AI systems, he said, “do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain,” and “do not have a moral conscience.”
He said AI systems may imitate empathy and understanding, “but they do not understand what they produce.” Pope Leo warned that AI tools can encourage people to seek “ready-made answers” while weakening “personal creativity and judgment.”
The Pope further warned that AI-generated conversations and emotional simulations could create “the illusion of a relationship with a real personal subject.” He said AI is no longer just a tool but “already an environment in which we are immersed.”
Bias, Exclusion, and Accountability: AI should not be treated as morally neutral, as “every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores, and optimises,” said Pope Leo. He warned that automated systems used in areas like employment, credit, and public services could create “new forms of exclusion.”
He further underlined how AI systems risk reinforcing “stereotypes or ideological bias” embedded by developers and designers by allowing algorithms to decide “who is worthy or not” without accountability, removing political responsibility, and hiding injustice “under a veneer of neutrality and objectivity.”
The Pope also raised concerns about hidden labour behind AI systems, saying solidarity requires recognising “the hidden, often exploited workers who sustain algorithmic systems.”
Call for Regulation and Oversight: Calling for stronger regulation, the Pope said, “It is not enough to invoke ethics in the abstract; robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users, and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are required.”
“Calling for prudence, rigorous evaluation, and even, at times, a slower pace in adopting AI does not mean opposing progress; instead, it is an exercise of responsible care for the human family,” Pope Leo further added. He underlined that societies must decide, “What are we building?” as AI rapidly reshapes institutions, relationships, and power structures.
He criticised the growing “technocratic paradigm” where “the logic of efficiency, control, and profit alone” increasingly shapes social and economic decisions. The Pope said technologies like AI, robotics, biotechnology, and cognitive science can help society but can also accelerate systems that “reduce creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency.”
Environmental and Social Costs: On environmental costs, the Pope said advanced AI systems consume “enormous amounts of energy and water,” increase carbon emissions, and require vast infrastructure, including “machines, cables, data centres and energy-intensive infrastructure.” He warned that the broader technological culture surrounding AI risks normalising “an anti-human vision” where human worth is tied to efficiency and optimisation.
Furthermore, he criticized ideas linked to transhumanism and posthumanism that promote the “enhanced human being” or “human-machine hybrid,” saying such thinking could make it easier to view some lives as “less useful, less desirable, or less worthy.” The Pope argued that human limitations, suffering, and vulnerability should not be treated simply as defects to eliminate, saying humanity often matures “through” limitations rather than despite them.
He underlined that technological progress should only be embraced if it does not destroy “the capacity for relationship and love.” Quoting Saint John Paul II, the Pope asked whether AI “make[s] human life on earth ‘more human’ in every aspect of that life? Does it make it more worthy of man?”
He concluded by warning that societies face two paths: technology that serves people or systems that become “a new form of Babel, a construction that is grandiose, yet fundamentally dehumanising.”
Read more:
For You
此内容由惯性聚合(RSS阅读器)自动聚合整理，仅供阅读参考。 原文来自 — 版权归原作者所有。