With Anthropic’s co-founder at his side today in Rome, Pope Leo XIV released to important new encyclical—the first—called “Magnifica Humanitas.” Calls for AI to be “disarmed” in the service of the common good.
“The word is strong,” Leo admits, but he deliberately chose the language of “disarmament” “because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, raising awareness and indicating paths forward for humanity.” Today, AI must be “freed from logic that turns it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death.”
The 40,000-word encyclical contains uncompromising criticism of AI-powered autonomous weapons, neocolonial attitudes toward data collection, and the hoarding of “new forms of property, such as patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure, and data.”
But the letter goes far beyond criticism: it updates catholic social teaching in a way that calls on everyone to “build,” a favorite term of the Silicon Valley elite. (See venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s well-known 2020 essay, “It’s time to build.”)
However, in Leo’s vision, this “building” extends beyond code, startups, factories, or homes. It calls for nothing less than the creation of a “civilization of love” in which everyone works for the common good within their own sphere of life and in which technology does not dominate, exclude or overlook humanity, but rather serves and augments it.
For this reason, despite publishing it today, León signed the encyclical on May 15, the anniversary of a famous 1891 encyclical called “new things“(“New Things”). That older document established Catholic social teaching during an era of capitalist upheaval, taking largely the side of workers and unions. Today, Leo updates the church’s social teaching for the age of AI, which he sees as the “new things of our time.”
that new thing
As his predecessor did 135 years ago, Leo warns that humans and humanity itself must not be left behind technological advances or new forms of power. He has clear eyes about the influence that the technological elites have today, comparing them with the colonial conquerors.
