Pope Leo Has Entered the AI Debate. Silicon Valley Should Listen.

Can the first digital-native pope save humanity from AI?

In 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum, a landmark encyclical critiquing unchecked capitalism and defending workers’ rights amid the Industrial Revolution.

Today, Leo XIV is invoking the spirit of his namesake to address a new revolution — this time in technology. As Hannah Roberts noted in Politico, “Just as Leo XIII promoted workers’ rights in the world created by the Industrial Revolution, Leo XIV is positioning himself as a guardian of the social fabric in the face of unchecked modern technologies”.

In his June 17, 2025, message to the Vatican’s Second Annual Conference on AI, Ethics, and Corporate Governance (published on the Holy See’s website), Leo laid out an analogous set of moral concerns about artificial intelligence.

Here are his five chief worries — all grounded in the Church’s call to uphold human dignity — and what they might mean for the unfolding AI debate.

1. Intelligence vs. Data: Preserving Human Meaning

Leo warned that the AI era threatens to reduce human intelligence and meaning to mere data processing.

He notes that no generation has ever had such ready access to information, but cautions that “access to data — however extensive — must not be confused with intelligence,” which, by contrast, “involves the person’s openness to the ultimate questions of life.”

In plain terms, he argues, abundant facts and algorithms cannot substitute for wisdom or a quest for truth.

“Authentic wisdom,” he says, “has more to do with recognizing the true meaning of life than with the availability of data”. This concern reflects a broader fear that over-reliance on computation will crowd out the moral, spiritual, and philosophical aspects of human thought.

If intelligence is equated with what an AI can compute, Leo warns, we risk losing sight of deeper purposes, just as Leo XIII challenged the view that workers were mere cogs in an industrial machine.

In short, AI tools must serve, not replace, the human quest for meaning.

2. Protecting Dignity and Personhood

A second worry is that AI-driven decision-making could undermine human dignity and individuality. Leo repeatedly stresses that every AI policy must be measured by the criterion of the “integral development of the human person,” which means safeguarding “the inviolable dignity of each human person”.

In his message, he echoes Pope Francis’s warning of a modern “eclipse of the sense of what is human,” suggesting that if we let machines rule too much of life, we may forget what makes us uniquely human.

In practical terms, this concern can be seen as a caution against unthinking algorithmic governance — for example, automated systems that manage work, justice, or social services without respect for cultural and spiritual diversity.

Leo’s lines remind tech leaders and regulators that policies must respect every person’s worth. As he puts it, even the great promise of AI must be judged by whether it truly contributes to a just and humane society.

In this way, he extends Leo XIII’s legacy of human-centered social teaching into the digital age.