Pope Leo urges AI disarmament in first encyclical (opens in new tab)

Pope Leo XIV issued his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” on May 25, making artificial intelligence central to a papal teaching document and calling for the technology to be “disarmed” rather than rejected. The document frames AI as a test of human dignity, labor, democracy and social justice, and urges governments, developers and users to keep the technology from becoming an instrument of domination, exclusion or death. Leo warned that AI development could concentrate power among a sm...