Pope Leo XIV issues first encyclical on AI, warning against power concentration
The document uses artificial intelligence as a framework to address inequality, democratic erosion, and the consolidation of power among a tech elite, coinciding with reports of US political delays in AI regulation.
Pope Leo XIV has published his first encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, which utilises artificial intelligence as a lens to examine entrenched societal issues such as inequality, democratic erosion, and the concentration of power within a tech elite. Released on Monday, the 200-page document argues that technology governed by a small group cannot serve the common good and calls for effective oversight and an end to the "AI arms race." The Pope presented the encyclical alongside Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah.
The text warns that AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess economic resources, expertise, and data access, allowing elites to shape information, consumption, and democratic processes to their own advantage. The Pope called for AI governance to be grounded in participation from affected communities and for "clear criteria and effective oversight." He argued that when power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, and inequalities.
The release occurred a few days after US President Donald Trump reportedly delayed signing an executive order on AI oversight, allegedly at the urging of VC investor and former White House AI czar David Sacks. The encyclical mandates that humans, not AI, must make all decisions related to weapons, stating that AI-driven weapons are beyond human control. The Pope argued that AI lacks moral conscience, spiritual perspective, and the capacity for genuine understanding, despite potentially surpassing human intelligence in speed and computation.
Notre Dame Law School professor Paolo Carozza, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and chair of the Meta Oversight Board, stated that AI-driven misinformation and deepfakes have corroded the capacity to distinguish truth, posing fundamental challenges to cognitive freedom. Carozza noted that the tech industry’s practice of harvesting and manipulating human data exacerbates these issues, reinforcing the encyclical’s concerns about the erosion of democratic integrity.
These concerns predate AI, echoing Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed similar issues of power concentration during the Industrial Revolution. Historical patterns of tech elite influence, including Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and its use in supporting Donald Trump’s election, as well as significant financial contributions from tech elites to super PACs to block AI regulation, provide context for the document’s focus on concentrated power. The Catholic Church is intervening in the tech sector, urging governments to prevent further consolidation of wealth and technological power.
