Artificial intelligence is no longer just a futuristic concept; it’s woven into the very fabric of our daily existence. From algorithms dictating what we see online to those shaping our work and collective choices, AI has become an invisible yet powerful infrastructure. In his groundbreaking encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, published on May 25, Pope Leo XIV doesn’t simply view AI as another technological advancement; he sees it as a fundamental part of our contemporary lives.
This pivotal text, the first signed by Pope Leo XIV, transcends a purely technological discussion. Instead, it firmly roots the issue of AI within the rich tradition of the Catholic Church’s social doctrine. Strikingly, it directly invokes and updates Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, published on May 15, 1891, in the year of its 135th anniversary. That historic encyclical grappled with the profound questions of labor during the peak of the late 19th-century industrial revolution.
AI and the Human Dignity Imperative
Just as the “new things” of Leo XIII’s era were factories, industrial labor, and nascent capitalism, today’s pressing “new issues” revolve around digital platforms, algorithms, data, and automation systems. These forces are fundamentally reshaping power dynamics, economic structures, and social relationships across the globe. Consequently, Magnifica Humanitas isn’t a technical treatise on innovation; it’s a profound attempt to interpret the vast digital transformation through the lens of human dignity and the common good.
The Pope emphasizes that technology itself is not inherently evil; indeed, it is a testament to human history and creativity. However, he acknowledges that the current situation differs significantly in both scale and depth. The encyclical powerfully observes, “Never has humanity had so much power over itself,” describing technologies that increasingly and pervasively shape our decision-making, collective imagination, and social fabric.
Robert Francis Prevost highlights this growing concentration of power, wielded through increasingly opaque yet decisive systems. A central question threads through the entire encyclical: What remains of human dignity, the pursuit of truth, meaningful work, social justice, and peace when crucial decisions are increasingly delegated to algorithmic logic?
Disarming Technology: A Call to Human-Centric AI
A pivotal expression within the encyclical, “disarming technology,” serves as a key to understanding its entire framework. This concept is far from an attempt to slow AI’s development or deny its immense potential for good. For Pope Leo XIV, “disarming AI” means preventing it from becoming a form of power that can dominate human existence and autonomy.
The core issue, then, isn’t the technology itself, but its organization and application. The Pope notes that AI is currently part of a global race for the “highest-performing algorithm” and the “largest data center,” where competitive advantage often becomes a geopolitical battleground. In this intense competition, a few dominant players accumulate digital infrastructure, data, and computing capacity, influencing everything from information flow to economic landscapes and even democratic processes.
“Disarming” technology, in this context, means breaking the dangerous equation between technical power and the right to govern. The pontiff clarifies, “As happens with every major technological turning point, AI tends above all to increase the power of those who already possess economic resources and access to data.”
The encyclical explicitly states that mere regulation of technology is insufficient. Instead, AI must be “taken away from monopolies,” made transparent, and open to challenge—essentially, made “habitable” by a diverse range of actors. Crucially, AI must be prevented from becoming an instrument of economic, political, or military domination by an elite few. This isn’t just a moral metaphor; it’s a fervent call to prevent the logic of unchecked competition from transforming a potentially shared infrastructure into a pervasive system of control.
Truth, Work, and Conflict in the Digital Age
When technology concentrates power, one of its immediate and concrete effects is on how collective truth is formed. The encyclical tackles disinformation, but with a deeper focus: our perceived reality, our very experience, is increasingly filtered by systems that determine what we see and what remains hidden. This isn’t solely about fake news; it’s about platforms and algorithms selecting information based on maximizing attention and engagement, meaning what becomes visible isn’t necessarily what is most true, but what best generates reactions.
Truth doesn’t vanish, but it becomes subservient to opaque systems that subtly influence opinions, perceptions, and collective choices, often without clear understanding of their mechanisms. This underscores the encyclical’s insistence on a crucial cultural and educational responsibility: to equip individuals to recognize these mechanisms and avoid entrusting public judgment solely to digital infrastructures driven by market or power logics.
The same dynamics profoundly affect the world of work, a central and tangible point of the encyclical. AI is not just seen as automation, but as a force capable of redefining who works, how they work, and their levels of autonomy. The Pope explicitly addresses the risk of a “social calamity” linked to technological unemployment, especially when innovation is driven primarily by cost-cutting and profit maximization.
In this alarming scenario, many activities could be replaced or stripped of their human content, reducing workers to repetitive or rigidly controlled functions. The encyclical meticulously details new forms of control: automated surveillance, fragmented tasks, and the erosion of autonomy. The concern extends beyond job loss to the transformation of work itself into something less human, less creative, and ultimately, less free.
This re-establishes the deep connection to the social doctrine of the Church, invoked from the document’s outset. Just as Rerum Novarum sought to interpret the industrial revolution’s impact on human lives, Magnifica Humanitas strives to do the same for the digital revolution. In this vision, work is not merely economic production or an optimized performance; it’s a vital space where individuals express their dignity, responsibility, and participate meaningfully in social life.
Therefore, if artificial intelligence reduces the worker to a measurable, controllable, and replaceable function, the problem transcends economics or technology. It becomes a profound social, political, and fundamentally human issue. The encyclical’s most radical aspect emerges when technology intersects with conflict, as Pope Leo XIV questions the traditional “just war” framework, deeming it increasingly inadequate for contemporary reality.
While acknowledging the right to self-defense, the Pope highlights the changing nature of conflict, now permeated by automated systems influencing information, strategy, and even the perception of the enemy. Algorithms don’t fight, but they create a new form of distance, progressively removing decision-making from human responsibility. This leads to a clear limit set by the encyclical: entrusting lethal or irreversible decisions to artificial systems is unacceptable.
Moral responsibility cannot be delegated or dissolved in automated chains. Here, the concept of “disarming technology” resurfaces as a concrete principle, emphasizing the critical importance of preventing machines from holding the power of life and death decisions. The concluding image of Magnifica Humanitas is that of a “construction site”—not a finished model, but an ongoing process where technology, economics, information, and conflict are intricately intertwined. This interweaving stems not from their sameness, but from their profound connection within the same digital infrastructure and power relations.
The encyclical’s ultimate message is clear: the central problem isn’t artificial intelligence as a technical object, but rather the kind of world it is helping to construct. The decisive question is no longer merely what technology can do, but who controls it, for what interests, and according to what vision of humanity. This story originally appeared in WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.
Source: Wired – AI
