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Home – Pope & Catholic News – Pope Leo’s Message in Magnifica Humanitas Is One We All Need to Hear

Pope Leo’s Message in Magnifica Humanitas Is One We All Need to Hear

Pope Leo XIV‘s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, is perfectly timed. In the document, signed on the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, the pope takes up the question that now looms over every sector of modern life: What happens to human dignity when artificial intelligence reshapes how we work, think, and relate to one another?

The short answer the pope gives is the same one the Church has consistently taught: Technology is not “a force antagonistic to humanity,” nor is it “inherently evil.” At the same time, “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.”

That’s a crucial distinction, and one that too many commentators on both sides of the AI debate miss. Tech utopians treat AI as an unalloyed good that will soon bring us vast riches and perhaps even immortality. Tech doomers treat it as an existential threat that must be stopped.

Leo threads the needle: AI is a powerful tool that reflects the nature and intentions of its makers. Our job is to ensure those intentions serve the common good.

On the question of human dignity, Leo is at his strongest. He insists that “the fundamental dignity of each person … is neither acquired nor earned, nor does it need to be justified.” He warns that “the pressure of new ideologies or certain highly powerful interests” can reduce the human person to “a resource to be used and exploited” or define people by “what they achieve or produce.”

In a world dazzled by machine performance, it’s tempting to measure human worth........

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