Pope Leo’s AI Encyclical Has Landed. It Offers Wisdom for Big Tech, Goverments and You

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Since his earliest days in the job, Pope Leo XIV has made talking about AI a priority of his papacy. On Monday, he released his first encyclical under the name Magnifica Humanitas (which translates to magnificent humanity) — a powerful 42,300-word document calling for regulation of the technology and a moral framework that protects humanity for generations to come.

The 70-year-old American Pope, who is a mathematician by training, was elected to the papacy in May 2025 and has made “the safeguarding of the human person in the time of artificial intelligence,” as the encyclical’s subhead reads, a central tenet of his first year in the role.

The document’s publication arrives at a moment that many are already comparing to the industrial revolution in terms of its impact on our work and ways of life. AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic are growing and improving the capabilities of their models at extraordinary rates, stoking the fires of the ongoing debate about whether AI will be be more beneficial or harmful to society.

Amid all of this, Pope Leo identifies AI as “a valuable tool that requires vigilance,” challenging the concentration of power among tech companies and addressing developers directly in places. The document is broad scope, calling for a caution in deploying AI in warfare and the workplace, and it will likely become a cornerstone text as policymakers and tech companies hammer out their strategies for building and regulating the technology in the coming years.

Pope Leo calls for AI to be “disarmed.”

Vatican Media

One message in the text that’s already drawing attention is Pope Leo’s call to “disarm AI.” While this might sound like a warning against the military use of artificial intelligence, it goes much further than that.

“To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern,” the Pope writes. “To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating…

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