Pope Leo XIV’s Warning About AI Goes Much Deeper Than Technology

Clear Facts

• Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical Magnifica Humanitas addresses AI but covers far more ground on human dignity and Catholic social teaching
• The Pope warns AI risks creating a ‘Tower of Babel’ environment of manipulation and domination if not properly guided by moral principles
• Leo expresses deep concern about AI’s impact on jobs, truth, mental health, and the addictive nature of social media

Pope Leo XIV’s latest encyclical is already being labeled the “AI encyclical,” but reducing this profound document to a single issue would be a serious mistake. While the pontiff does address artificial intelligence with remarkable insight, the letter covers essential ground on human dignity, Catholic social teaching, and the future of civilization itself.

The best way to understand this text is through its title: Magnifica Humanitas — the magnificent humanity. Pope Leo insists we human beings possess irreducible nobility because we have been made in the image and likeness of God and elevated through the Incarnation to share in divinity itself. This isn’t secular humanism — it’s a deeply theological vision of what it means to be human.

The encyclical opens with a powerful contrast from the Old Testament: the construction of the Tower of Babel versus the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls. The first, driven by pride and undertaken without reference to God, led to disaster. The second, supervised by Nehemiah and predicated on cooperation for God’s glory, produced something beautiful.

Pope Leo worries that many of today’s “new things,” including AI and advanced technology, carry a Tower of Babel quality — a tendency toward manipulation, domination, and reducing all communication to a singular digital language. But he firmly believes these marvels can enhance human dignity and community when rightly employed.

Before diving into technology, the Pope provides a remarkably concise overview of Catholic social teaching. He demonstrates how the Church’s doctrine maintains satisfying ideological balance: subsidiarity alongside solidarity, individual dignity balanced with the common good, private property rights placed alongside the universal destination of goods. This creative tension allows the Church to engage constructively across the political spectrum.

When Leo turns to AI and communication technology, his analysis is conditioned by what he calls the “technocratic paradigm” — the dangerous tendency to privilege efficiency, control, and practical results over human dignity and genuine communion. AI and related technologies are good when they function as tools in the hands of responsible moral agents. They become problematic when they dominate thought and action, bending the human toward the machine.

As an Augustinian, Pope Leo is deeply concerned with truth. He fears the digital space is inhabited by people more interested in power than reality. The denizens of the AI world can propagate fake news, distorted narratives, and misleading information for various reasons.

“Such power should be constantly guided by the pursuit of truth and respect for human dignity, so that the culture fostered on the internet does not become an instrument of excessive distraction, homogenization or dominance, but rather a setting in which inner freedom and critical thought can mature.”

The Pope warns that AI undermines the slow, patient, careful work required to uncover deeper truth. The ease with which AI delivers data deceives us into thinking that acquiring “information” equals understanding.

“Many educators already report signs of dehumanization, where people may ‘know many things’ but struggle to find direction in their lives, partly due to an inability to connect information with deeper knowledge or maintain a sense of purpose.”

Leo is deeply distressed by the negative psychological impact of the internet. Many studies demonstrate tight correlation between screen time and depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. The internet has proved a breeding ground for sexual exploitation, grooming, and blackmail — an environment where the worst forms of pornography have become available to children. The Pope calls for effective regulation of this potentially dangerous space.

Another major concern is how AI affects the workplace. Following St. John Paul II, Leo maintains that labor isn’t merely practical necessity but an essential dimension of human flourishing. Through our toil, we engage our minds, wills, and bodies, actualizing potentialities we didn’t realize we had.

When AI’s speed and efficiency effectively eliminate millions of jobs, certain economic advantages might accrue to the powerful, but moral and spiritual disaster occurs for the working class.

“The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good.”

Pope Leo expresses deep anxiety about the addictive quality of social media. The devices giving us web access were consciously designed to be addictive — most evident in the “doomscrolling” practiced by so many today. Since AI tools capture massive personal data, we’re deeply vulnerable to manipulation by those with questionable economic and political motivations.

“When every action — movements, purchases, relationships and preferences — leaves a trace, a new form of power emerges, namely the power to profile, predict and influence behavior, often without individuals being fully aware of it.”

The final chapter shifts focus to war and peace — potentially the most controversial section given today’s roiled political circumstances. This part is thoroughly Augustinian, contrasting Roman society predicated on worship of morally ambiguous gods with Christian society predicated on worshiping the God whose name is love.

Pope Leo is anguished because he sees the ways of war dominating today’s world polity. He calls upon the Church to provide an alternative vision — a civilization of love emerging not from grand plans imposed from above but from steady individual work producing cumulative effects over time.

Remarkably, Leo quotes J.R.R. Tolkien: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.”

Especially now, when AI and advanced technology have made warfare more likely and more “efficient,” Pope Leo wants the Church to present the path of peace to the world.

There’s one puzzling line where Leo suggests just war theory is “outdated.” While the means of waging war have changed dramatically since Augustine’s time, the criteria themselves — declaration by just authority, proportionality, discrimination between combatants and noncombatants, last resort — remain vital. They should be applied with particular rigor in our present circumstance.

This letter deserves careful, meditative reading. Step away from the online world of shouted opinions, arrogant self-assertion, and verbal violence. Take in the work of this wise man who is an expert in humanity.

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