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This was not exactly by design, but it turns out we have four AI items we want to write. So, we officially declare this to be "AI Week." Note that this is a real "week," not a fake one like "Infrastructure Week."
Today, we will talk about how AI has now taken on a spiritual dimension. Well, OK, maybe it already had a spiritual dimension, we don't know. It definitely has one now, because Pope Leo XIV issued the first encyclical of his papacy, and it's a takedown of AI. The full title is:
ENCYCLICAL LETTER
MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS
OF HIS HOLINESS
POPE LEO XIV
ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON
IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
It starts by comparing AI to the Tower of Babel, and pretty much goes from there. For a total of nearly 43,000 words.
The Roman Catholic Church, as you may have heard, is not exactly known for enthusiastically embracing change. That said, Leo knows full well that AI is here to stay, and that nothing he can do will change that. And so, the main argument of the encyclical is that AI must be made to serve "magnificent humanity," not the other way around. The Pope has a number of warnings, speaking to potential problems he sees if AI is not handled very, very carefully. A rundown of the biggies:
Leo devotes particular attention to that last point, arguing that there can be no such thing as a "just war," and asserting that "No algorithm can make war morally acceptable." One wonders if he had any particular wars, underway at this very moment, in mind as he wrote that.
There are also portions of the encyclical where Leo freestyles a bit, and goes off on something of a sidebar. For example, he has quite a few thoughts on the subject of migrants, including:
A litmus test for social justice today is the treatment of migrants, refugees and those forced to move due to poverty, violence, climate change and environmental disasters. The way a society treats them reveals whether its sense of justice is driven by fear or by the spirit of fraternity. Pope Francis urged us to see migrants not simply as a problem to be managed, but as a living image of the People of God on the move. They are people with dignity, resources and dreams, who have the right to be treated with respect and to ask to become active members of the societies that welcome them.
Again, hard to know if Leo had any particular person or society in mind. Very hard, indeed.
Another bit of freestyling, which got a fair bit of attention, is this passage about slavery:
This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached. It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.
The Church's hands are certainly dirty here; beyond overlooking slave systems for many, many centuries, it also gave direct sanction to Spanish and Portuguese slave-catching operations as part of the "Doctrine of Discovery" in the 1400s. The Vatican repudiated that doctrine in 2023, but yesterday was apparently the first time a pope formally apologized for the Church's support of the institution.
We aren't sure what all the implications of all of this will be, but we think we're on safe ground with these two assertions: (1) The debate over AI gets more complicated on a daily basis, and (2) the relationship between the Pope and the Trump administration gets more fraught on a daily basis. In case you are keeping score at home, about 20% of the U.S. population is Catholic but about 25% of the electorate is Catholic due to exceptionally high turnout among Catholic voters. (Z)