Pope Leo says artificial intelligence must be "disarmed"

2026-05-25 19:06:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Pope Leo has presented the first major teaching document of his papacy, warning that artificial intelligence must be "disarmed."

"The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention," the Pope said.

Encyclicals are technically letters addressed to Catholic bishops, but over the past few decades these letters have transformed into messages addressed to the world by a Pope.

While this letter focused primarily on artificial intelligence, Pope Leo also included one of the strongest and most comprehensive apologies from the Vatican for the Catholic Church's role in slavery.

It was “impossible not to feel deep sorrow when thinking about the immense suffering and humiliation that so many people have experienced,” the Pope wrote, adding that he “sincerely apologized” on behalf of the Church.

Leo mentioned the slave trade in relation to artificial intelligence, suggesting that the world was in danger of once again normalizing the exploitation of humans - both in its production and in its applications.

Some of the Pope's strongest images in the document relate to slavery, warning of parallels between the historical tragedy of traditional slavery and the emerging threats of the "new digital slavery."

He suggested a danger of a similar normalization of exploitation and that humanity was at a similar moral crossroads.

Unusually, Pope Leo chose to present the encyclical himself - titled "Magnifica Humanitas" ("Magnificent Humanity") - at the Vatican, alongside artificial intelligence experts, including Christopher Olah, co-founder of US artificial intelligence giant Anthropic.

In remarks after the encyclical's presentation, Olah said that every artificial intelligence lab, including his own, operated "within a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing."

It would be a mistake to believe that AI issues were best handled by computer scientists like himself, Olah added: "The questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI ??research community, not only in their implications but also in their nature."

The Pope's encyclical - which also acknowledged many potential pitfalls in artificial intelligence - is also a stark and direct message to those in positions of power about their responsibilities in curbing the "threats" it poses.

For example, the Pope condemned the use of Artificial Intelligence in warfare, saying that reducing human control over weapons makes it even more difficult to consider a war "just" and warned against starting an arms race using artificial intelligence.

"No algorithm can make war morally acceptable," the Pope wrote.

Not only does artificial intelligence not remove the "intrinsic inhumanity" of war, he said, but it also risks escalating conflict more quickly and making it more impersonal by "lowering the threshold for the use of violence, transforming defense into threat prediction and thus reducing victims to data."

Leo also criticized the way artificial intelligence influences politics - such as the way it has been used to manipulate images and videos, which he said exposes people to biased or misleading perspectives.

In the past, the Pope has compared today's need for safeguards to protect people in the face of developments in artificial intelligence to those that were necessary to ensure human dignity during the industrial revolution.

He suggested comparisons of the failure to act against the dangers of artificial intelligence today with “the delay with which both society and the Church began to denounce the scourge of slavery.” He even referred to the dangers of “digital colonialism,” linking colonial-era abuses to modern technological practices.

At one point in this document, the Pope directly issued a "special appeal" to those developing artificial intelligence.

"Developers bear a special ethical and spiritual responsibility, because every design choice reflects a vision of humanity," he said.

But what impact will all this have?

Pope Leo has assembled a commission to advance his work, but there are big questions about how effective all of this will be in the face of rapid technological advances.

In 2015, the late Pope Francis wrote his encyclical Laudato Si, which focused on the urgent need to address the climate crisis - but then followed it up in 2023 by speaking of his frustration at the inaction he had had./CNA, translated by BBC