Paper Club: The Pope's Encyclical on AI
For this edition of Paper Club, we are going to be discussing the Pope's Encyclical on AI!
Who would have thought that the Pope would write a whole 40,000+ word paper regarding AI?
We will be going through what he wrote, discussing what his arguments are, and seeing how relevant they are.
Important Note: This is not meant to be a religious discussion about the Catholic faith, nor are we taking everything that the Pope says as truth. The purpose is to read his arguments and discuss what we think about them.
About the Encyclical:
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, is a sweeping attempt to bring Roman Catholic social teaching into the age of artificial intelligence. Released on the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII’s foundational text on labor and industrial capitalism, the document treats AI not as a niche technology issue but as the defining moral test of a new era.
The pope’s central argument is that AI must serve the human person, not replace, diminish or dominate humanity. He rejects both utopian promises that technology will automatically solve human problems and fatalistic fears that machines will inevitably overtake society. AI, he writes, can simulate human language, reasoning and creativity, but it does not possess conscience, empathy, moral responsibility or spiritual depth. For that reason, he insists, decisions affecting human dignity cannot be outsourced to machines.
Much of the encyclical is aimed at what Leo calls the concentration of power. He warns that AI systems, controlled by states or corporations, can deepen inequality, intensify surveillance and turn personal data into a tool for manipulation. The pope calls for clear legal frameworks, independent oversight, transparency in automated decision-making and accountability across the entire chain of AI development and deployment. Efficiency and profit, he argues, are inadequate measures of progress.
The enyclical can be found here: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html