What the Pope Said About A.I.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/what-pope-leo-xiv-said-about-ai
Publish Date: 2026-05-27 06:00:00
Source Domain: www.newyorker.com
If those of us Americans who are Catholic are proud of this Pope, many of us are even prouder that the first American pontiff has taken on this vital matter, and at such a crucial moment. In much of American culture—and especially in the business and tech press—challenging the economic power and oligarchic rule of U.S.-based artificial-intelligence companies is an act tantamount to heresy. Pope Leo is not only willing but eager to dissent. Bless him.
Much of the encyclical involves defending the proposition that the Vatican ought to be—and has always been—engaged in making statements about new and very worldly things like artificial intelligence. “The Church is present in history and engages in dialogue with the world,” Leo argues. He agrees with the Sam Altmans and Elon Musks of the world that humanity stands at a crossroads. But at this crossroads, he argues, three questions must be asked: “Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as a people and as a human community?” Invoking a Biblical story about hubris, the building of the Tower of Babel, he warns of what he calls the “Babel syndrome”: “namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language—even a digital one—can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance.”
Beginning with the fundamental dignity of the human, Leo traces the inalienable, universal equality of persons and their inviolable rights. He establishes, within the Church’s Social Doctrine (traceable to “Rerum Novarum”), principles that include the commitment to the common good, which he defines as “the social expression of the dignity recognized in every person.” Revisiting Pope Francis’s “Laudati Si’ ” (“Praise Be to You”), a 2015 encyclical that called for the protection of the environment, “our common home,”…
