The most powerful moral institution on earth has something to say about AI. And it isn't about robots taking over.
Pope Leo XIV chose his name deliberately. Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum in 1891 — the great defence of workers' rights during the first Industrial Revolution. Leo XIV is making a declaration: AI is the second Industrial Revolution, and the questions it raises about human dignity, labour, and justice are the same questions, in a new form.
"With artificial intelligence, the rights of workers will need to be defended again."
Pope Leo XIVThat is not a technological statement. It is a moral one. And I think he is right.
What I Find Less Persuasive
The debate I find exhausting is the one about AI developing consciousness, thinking for itself, and becoming an existential threat to humanity. Films have been made about it. Books have been written. Serious people have staked reputations on it.
I think it is nonsense.
AI is software. Extraordinarily powerful, genuinely transformative software — but software. It does not want. It does not fear. It does not harbour ambition or resentment. The danger does not live inside the machine.
Karl Marlantes — Vietnam veteran, Marine Corps officer, author of Matterhorn — wrote something that has stayed with me. Reflecting on combat and what war reveals about human nature, he said:
"Sometimes I think military training is less about turning young men into killing machines and more about being a finishing school for something already there. Every combat veteran I've talked to, without exception, knows exactly what I mean."
Karl Marlantes — MatterhornThe danger was never the training. It was never the weapon. It was the hand that held it — and what was already in that hand.
AI is no different. I am supremely confident that man is capable of far greater evil than any algorithm. History is not short of evidence.
What the Pope Gets Right
Pope Francis put it precisely in his 2024 World Day of Peace message: "The technological paradigm embodied by artificial intelligence risks making the concept of a 'whole person' disappear, in favour of the parts that can be quantified and programmed."
That is the real danger. Not a machine that wakes up. A world that forgets what a human being is.
Mankind is made in God's image. That is not a theological point I am asking anyone to accept — it is a statement about the irreducible nature of human dignity. There are things that cannot be quantified, cannot be optimised, cannot be delegated to an algorithm: conscience, compassion, moral judgement, love. The question the Pope is really asking — and the right question — is not "what can AI do?" but "what should we do?"
Those are different questions. Only one of them matters.
AI will be what we make it. That is the point. That has always been the point.
The question is not what can AI do. It is what should we do. Those are different questions. Only one of them matters.