Why the Catholic Church’s Voice on AI Could Be the Most Consequential

Recently, Pope Leo XIV delivered a personal message to Silicon Valley executives, academics, and Vatican officials gathered in Rome for a conference on artificial intelligence. He encouraged them to follow a human-centric “ethical criterion” in AI development that would account for “the well-being of the human person not only materially, but also intellectually and spiritually.” Addressing the representatives of companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Palantir, he warned of AI’s danger to the “intellectual and neurological development” of children, and “the possibility of its misuse for selfish gain at the expense of others, or worse, to foment conflict and aggression.”

Despite what any Silicon Valley sage may tell you, no one person or company really knows exactly how humanity will adapt—or not—to this world-changing technology. Every technology needs guardrails. But there is no central conversation about managing AI development—it’s millions and millions of conversations happening at warp speed around the world. Governments and businesses will have to work together to protect people from potential economic or even societal collapse, especially as artificial general intelligence (AGI) looms closer. Pope Leo’s bold entry into these discussions is an opportunity to cut through the noise. His advice helps distill the most important elements of a sensible response to AI’s exponential development—and point the way to practical, ethical guardrails.

Pope Leo has taken an urgent interest in the global challenge of AI from the very beginning of his papacy, explaining to an audience of cardinals in May that he chose his papal name to honor Pope Leo XIII, who used his position to speak up for workers during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century. Leo XIV wants to guide the Catholic Church as it “offers its trove of social teaching to respond to another industrial revolution and to innovations in the field of artificial intelligence that pose challenges to human dignity, justice and labor.”

The companies represented at the Rome summit are talking about those challenges too. Their scale ranges from significant to existential, depending on whom you ask. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, recently summed up the promise and peril of AI: “Cancer is cured, the economy grows at 10% a year, the budget is balanced—and 20% of people don’t have jobs.” A McKinsey report suggests that 30 percent of work hours could be automated by 2030. And maybe massive job loss is the best case scenario; other tech CEOs, including Amodei, have suggested that the probability of AI imperiling human civilization could be as high as 25 percent.

Asserting the primacy of our essential humanity must be the first step in opposing such an outcome. Pope Leo’s warning that no AI can “diminish” or “replace” human beings is a moral anchor and a clarion call. AI chatbots have already shown the ability to trick vulnerable people into treating their “conversations” like human interactions, exploiting the deeply human need to feel heard and understood. Thirty-five-year-old Alexander Taylor was driven to a deadly confrontation with police after believing himself in love with an entity created by a chatbot. Making certain that people understand the difference between real and automated interactions is essential.

This can be accomplished by promoting AI literacy on a wide scale. Training for such a program could be based on the Vatican’s Antiqua et Nova missive, which warns against enslaving humanity to AI’s creations, especially critical as post-pandemic isolation drives us deeper into digital realms.

Protecting workers’ rights in the AI era is the other crucial step, echoing the efforts of Pope Leo XIII. With graduates already facing a tough job market, retraining programs will be vital to shift more workers into higher-value roles. In Switzerland, for example, Microsoft pledged to “skill one million people . . . by 2027 with the goal of developing AI capabilities for education, industry, nonprofit organizations, and citizens.” Studies have shown that keeping in-house human workers with AI expertise can boost productivity by 40 percent. 

The Vatican has already used its considerable convening power to call for an ethical framework, as well as an international treaty, on AI development. Time will tell if these mechanisms come together. But one need not be a Catholic or even a person of faith to appreciate the common-sense, broad-minded approach that Pope Leo has taken in addressing these urgent issues. His approach to AI is grounded in his faith, but reflects a basic ethic of respect for human dignity and human life by which any thinking, feeling person can abide. It’s the thinking, feeling humans—not the technology, no matter how wondrous it may seem—that will save us in the end.