Pope Weighs in on AI
The Vatican issued Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical this month. Magnifica Humanitas or “Magnificent Humanity” as the encyclical is titled, seeks to guide the church and, humanity in general, on the effects of AI on society during this time of enormous uncertainty. In a week in which the world’s insatiable demand for compute and datacenters in space created the world’s first trillionaire, I felt it was appropriate to try and understand the Pope’s guidance on AI. The White House released an executive order “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security” on June 2nd which explicitly sought a voluntary market-driven approach to AI innovation, and this week imposed radical export controls on Anthropic’s latest version of Claude 5 “Fable”, exposing a stark contradiction between the administration's public rhetoric and its national security enforcement. Some say Anthropic brought this one on themselves through their earlier claims regarding Claude Mythos, others wonder whether there is a private agenda against Anthropic. Busy week!
The encyclical is a very cohesive argument for safeguarding human dignity in the era of AI and potential digital transformation and disruption of vast swathes of society. Following in the tradition of the last Pope named Leo - Leo XIII, who issued the Rerum Novarum (yeah, I read that too for you). Rerum Novarum means “of new things” or as described later in church teachings, is about revolutionary change. It was an encyclical on Capital and Labor and laid the foundations for the Church’s guidance on social justice. Issued in 1891, the opening of the Rerum Novarum conjures a mood not that far removed from what is bubbling up today.
The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable, in the vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvellous discoveries of science; in the changed relations between masters and workmen; in the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses; the increased self reliance and closer mutual combination of the working classes; as also, finally, in the prevailing moral degeneracy. The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension; wise men are discussing it; practical men are proposing schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and rulers of nations are all busied with it - actually there is no question which has taken deeper hold on the public mind.
Reading it, juxtaposed against the Magnifica Humanitas, one almost senses why Robert Francis Provost chose his Papal name. They seem to be kindred spirits in their concerns for workers and the state of the world. Pope Leo XIII tried to thread a middle ground between unfettered capitalism and the emerging drive towards socialism. Ultimately, Pope XIII calls for the collaboration of the Church, the State, and private associations, such as unions, to ensure that the pursuit of profit never eclipses the inherent dignity of the human person.
If Industrial revolution threatened to remove the drudgery of manual labor, the current AI advances seem to promise a dramatic reduction in repetitive mental labor. While some argue that the labor market will be decimated and we will need to consider Universal Basic Income (or whatever redistribution mechanism you prefer), others suggest merely a transitional disruption followed by new categories of jobs requiring different skills. The encyclical:
Reaffirms the foundational principles of social doctrine (Human dignity, common good, universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity, and social justice)
Explores the challenge of the technocratic paradigm (the dominance of a search for efficiency, the nature of artificial intelligence which is more “grown than built”, environmental resource impact, the pursuit of transhumanism, posthumanism and illusion of technical salvation)
Argues for safeguarding humanity in key areas (truth as a common good, dignity of work, family and youth, and warns against new forms of slavery)
Posits that we are at crossroads between a “culture of power” symbolized by the Tower of Babel and a “civilization of love” symbolized by the collaborative rebuilding of Jerusalem (privatized global dominance, normalization of war and AI arms race, data colonialism)
Calls for a revival of Paul VI‘s “Civilization of Love” (‘Disarming’ AI, warns of lethal autonomous weapons risk, expanding the universal destination of goods1, reviving multilateralism, cross-faith pursuit of a just global order)
I know this is a heavy topic. But it is an important one and I wish we as a society were being more thoughtful about the needed discussions. When the Pope quotes the Lord of the Rings, we should pay attention:
The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” [187] The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization. For this reason, it is worthwhile pausing to reflect on some aspects of how we, each in our own way, can cooperate in building the civilization of love. Without presuming to exhaust this theme, I would like to propose five paths toward daily and public responsibility: the need to disarm words, building peace through justice, adopting the perspective of victims, cultivating a healthy realism and reviving dialogue and multilateralism.
As the encyclical says, we should be building for the common good. After all, the knowledge of the entire human race is being captured and encoded in these models. The Pope Leo XIV’s reminder about Babel and exhortation to a collaborative effort akin to rebuilding of Jerusalem will likely fall on deaf ears in this era of every country for itself. As the Pope suggests, we can all do our part, even if the problem seems too big for us to have any impact on it.
1 “Destination of goods”, “solidarity”, “subsidiarity” etc. have very specific meaning in the context of the encyclical and papal teachings and writings (the Papal Magisterium). “Destination of goods” for example means that the "universal destination of goods" is the principle that God gave the earth's resources—including soil, water, air, and natural resources—to the entire human family to sustain the lives of everyone. It dictates that every single person has an inherent right to access and use these goods, both in the present and in the future. It has been interesting to delve into that, but there isn’t enough room in a short newsletter to cover the full nuance of all of it. Both encyclicals (Rerum Novarum and the Magnifica Humanitas) are worth the read.