Pope publishes Magnifica Humanitas, cautioning AI usage

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Pope Leo XIV has taken up the legacy of his predecessor, writing a social encyclical which addresses one of the principal challenges of the contemporary age: artificial intelligence.

Divided into five chapters, Magnifica humanitas has an underlying premise: technology is not “a force antagonistic to humanity” (4), nor is it “inherently evil” (9). However, “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.

Therefore, Pope Leo XIV appeals for people to build “for the common good” and to “remain human,” following a courageous mentality of shared responsibility and communion, so that the world “will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell” (16).

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In the second chapter, Pope Leo XIV explores the “Foundations and Principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church”.

These foundations, he says, include the dignity of the person, created in the image and likeness of God. It is important to recall this since “the pressure of new ideologies or certain highly powerful interests” can reduce the human person to “a resource to be used and exploited” or “on what they achieve or produce” (51). On the contrary, “the fundamental dignity of each person…is neither acquired nor earned, nor does it need to be justified”

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