{"id":254850,"date":"2026-05-25T08:23:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T12:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/pope-leo-denounces-culture-of-power-driving-rise-of-ai-pope-leo-xiv\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T09:05:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T13:05:22","slug":"pope-leo-denounces-culture-of-power-driving-rise-of-ai-pope-leo-xiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/pope-leo-denounces-culture-of-power-driving-rise-of-ai-pope-leo-xiv\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo denounces \u2018culture of power\u2019 driving rise of AI | Pope Leo XIV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pope Leo denounces \u2018culture of power\u2019 driving rise of AI | Pope Leo XIV<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/may\/25\/pope-leo-encyclical-ai-artificial-intelligence-slavery<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-25 08:23:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Pope Leo has denounced the \u201cculture of power\u201d driving the rapid rise of artificial intelligence while warning that the technology must be subject to the \u201cmost rigorous\u201d ethical constraints as it infiltrates everything from work to war.<\/p>\n

In his encyclical \u2013 the first major text on safeguarding humankind of his papacy \u2013 he also apologised for the Catholic church\u2019s long delay in condemning slavery, describing it as \u201ca wound in Christian memory\u201d, and spoke of the \u201cnew forms of slavery\u201d due to the digital economy.<\/p>\n

In a break from tradition, Leo, who soon after being elected in May last year said he considered AI to be the biggest threat to humanity today, presented the document himself on Monday during an event at the Vatican. Among those in attendance was Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, a US-based AI firm thatis embroiled in a lawsuit with Donald Trump\u2019s administration over the ethics of AI.<\/p>\n

Encyclicals are one of the highest forms of teaching from a pope to the Catholic church\u2019s 1.4 billion members, and typically outline his priorities while highlighting the major issues in society.<\/p>\n

In the document, called Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity), Leo, who was born in Chicago and is the first US-born pope, referred to \u201ca troubling revival of war as an instrument of international politics\u201d and said AI was helping to facilitate the \u201cnormalisation of war\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor this reason, the development and use of AI in warfare must be subject to the most rigorous ethical constraints, to guarantee respect for human dignity and the sanctity of life and to avoid a race to develop such arms,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Leo urged the \u201cdisarming\u201d of AI, while stating that some autonomous weapons systems are \u201cpractically beyond any human reach\u201d to control.<\/p>\n

\u201cDisarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of \u2018armed\u2019 competition,\u201d he wrote. \u201cTo disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity,\u201d adding…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Leo denounces \u2018culture of power\u2019 driving rise of AI | Pope Leo XIV https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/may\/25\/pope-leo-encyclical-ai-artificial-intelligence-slavery…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":254851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/29470a09c5de3ee3c4c64574e6c5bcb096a1e84c\/190_0_1898_1519\/master\/1898.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=cafaa90a59f6891871d6663e13ab8ab0","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254852,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254850\/revisions\/254852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}