Pope Leo XIV issues encyclical on AI and power concentration

Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical on Monday. Titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” the 200-page formal papal letter addresses safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence. The Pope presented the document alongside Chris Olah, co-founder of AI company Anthropic. In the document, Pope Leo XIV argues that technology governed by a small elite cannot serve the common good. The encyclical states that, as with every major technological shift, AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess economic resources, expertise, and access to data. It warns that when such power is concentrated, it tends to become opaque, evade public oversight, and increase the risk of inequalities and new dependencies.

The encyclical’s release comes amid political friction in the US. It follows reports that President Donald Trump delayed signing his executive order on AI, which would have established government oversight for new models before release. Trump reportedly delayed the order at the urging of venture capital investor and former White House AI czar David Sacks. To counter these dynamics, Pope Leo XIV called for AI development to be guided by clear criteria and effective oversight, urging an end to the AI arms race to build increasingly powerful algorithms and larger datasets for geopolitical or commercial dominance. He noted that disarming requires discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern, drawing historical parallels to Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” which addressed similar concentrations of power during the Industrial Revolution.

The societal risks of unregulated AI are already drawing warnings from governance experts. Paolo Carozza, a Notre Dame Law School professor, member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, and chair of the Meta Oversight Board—an independent body that reviews content moderation decisions—warned of the immediate consequences of these technologies. Carozza stated that AI-driven misinformation and deepfakes have “corroded our capacity to recognize what’s true and what’s not true, and that really has consequences for democratic politics.” He added that the tech industry’s practice of harvesting and manipulating human data poses fundamental challenges to cognitive freedom.

Why it matters

The encyclical frames AI governance not as a technical challenge, but as a moral and political one. It argues that current power structures in the industry inherently threaten democratic processes and cognitive freedom, warning that technology governed by a small elite cannot serve the common good.