Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on artificial intelligence shows humans have a champion.
In my last opinion piece as religion editor Age I pranked the opinion editor, a good friend of mine, by filing my article in Latin. I used Google Translate, which is a type of artificial intelligence. Ten years later, I’m afraid the joke is on me.
This is the only time I’ve used AI in writing, but its meteoric rise may soon define society, if not already. It cannot be left to dominant voices.
Who today believes that Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or the Chinese or American governments have the slightest interest in the public good compared to the power, control, efficiency, wealth, and military might they could gain from AI?
Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on Artificial Intelligence last Monday, Magnifica Humanitas, shows that he has a champion for ordinary people. According to Leo, the most important stakeholders are the masses who are not billionaires or technocrats, but whose lives are already greatly affected by AI, both for good and bad.
With the advent of calculators, people generally lost the ability to perform mental arithmetic. Now that we are ready to outsource so much thought, the cost can be incalculable.
Studies show that the average IQ in the West has been falling for 15 years. As society becomes ever more atomistic and fragmented, the ability to engage in critical reasoning declines, creating an epidemic of loneliness that AI purveyors are eager to fill with a simple alternative.
Leo brought to this arena a calm, thoughtful, and compassionate voice that rightly puts people at the center.
He describes this challenge in his first sentence: “Humanity, created by God in all its glory, faces a crucial choice today: either to build a new Tower of Babel or to build the city where God and humanity live together.”
Babylon is the biblical story of humanity trying to usurp God; The parallels are clear.
Leo does not reject science or technology, but “embraces them with gratitude and realism and grounds them in a higher vocation.” As long as they focus on the common good, justice, and care for the vulnerable and creation, they can alleviate suffering and open possibility.
He should be a servant, not a master, he should not subject people to the mentality of power, he should not normalize an anti-human paradigm.
Our relationship with life seems to be in crisis today, Leo writes. In the technocratic mindset, “limits” (incapacity, disease, old age, pain, fragility) are a flaw that needs to be corrected. But boundaries are part of being human and often a gateway to growth.
Leo identifies not only the problem but also the antidote: Improve human relationships and physical community, reduce dependence on social media, become knowledgeable about artificial intelligence, and stop sharing disinformation.
Barney Zwartz is senior fellow at the Center for Public Christianity.
Barney Zwartz, a senior fellow at the Center for Public Christianity, was religion editor of The Age from 2002 to 2013.
