Pope Leo warns of dangers of Artificial Intelligence

https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/news/pope-leo-warns-of-dangers-of-artificial-intelligence/

Publish Date: 2026-05-25 08:24:00

Source Domain: religionmediacentre.org.uk

By Catherine Pepinster

Pope Leo XIV has warned of the dangers facing human civilisation in the face of the growing power and influence of artificial intelligence in his most authoritative document yet.

The Pope, who said when he was elected last year that responding to AI would be a priority of his pontificate, has set out his views in his encyclical, or teaching document:

“Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it,” and that those involved in developing AI, “bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility, for every design choice reflects a vision of humanity.”

AI must be “disarmed,” he said, in order to free it from the mentality of military, economic, and cognitive competition. “To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity”.

The encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), not only focuses on AI but other pressing issues of our time, including war, modern slavery, wealth inequality, threats to democracy and to human endeavours.

But it is AI that is Pope Leo’s chief concern and the ethical dilemmas surrounding it – a decline in human solidarity and the need to maintain focus on the differences between people and machines. Technology, he writes, “merely imitates certain functions of human intelligence” and cannot replace that intelligence.

“So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean,” he says.

One of Leo’s particular concerns is the way in which AI could be used in warfare, which he says must be subject to the “most rigorous ethical constraints”.

Pope Leo…

Source