AI must – In a 245-paragraph encyclical released Monday, Pope Leo XIV warned that AI power is concentrating in the hands of a few and could trigger opaque development, new dependencies, and social exclusion—while also urging developers to build with transparency and war
Monday morning at the Vatican carried the weight of a moral deadline. Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical—an extended 245-paragraph text—was unveiled under the title “Magnifica humanitas: on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence. ” and the message was hard-edged: AI is already reshaping economic life. and the public will pay for it if power stays locked away.
AI leaders had lobbied ahead of the release. and Anthropic cofounder Chris Olah appeared in Vatican City after the pope unveiled the letter. Pope Leo thanked Olah and then directly pledged cooperation. “I accept your invitation to work together. to listen and to speak. and together. to find a way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence. ” the pope said.
The encyclical spreads across multiple arenas—autonomous weapons. the environmental impact of AI. and the risk the technology poses to human connection. It also makes an important distinction: Pope Leo does not see artificial intelligence as “inherently evil.” Still. the intervention lands with urgency in a debate that has grown increasingly heated as AI investment and adoption accelerate.
One takeaway sits at the center of the pope’s economic warning: AI shouldn’t be monopolized by Big Tech. Throughout the letter. Pope Leo repeatedly warned about AI power becoming concentrated in “the hands of a few.” The industry is dominated by major Big Tech players. including Nvidia. Microsoft. Amazon. Google. Meta. OpenAI. and Anthropic. The pope did not explicitly name any companies. but he warned about “major economic and technological actors” increasingly controlling platforms. infrastructure. data. and computing power.
When such power is concentrated in “the hands of a few,” Pope Leo wrote that it “tends to become opaque and evade public oversight,” raising “the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities.”
To argue against that concentration. he drew on the Catholic principle of the “universal destination of goods. ” which holds that all humans have an inherent right to natural resources such as air and water. In the pope’s framing, that idea should now extend to algorithms, digital platforms, and data. The letter also warns that “small but highly influential groups” could use AI to shape democratic processes and steer economic systems to their own advantage.
The prescription is blunt. Pope Leo called for AI to be “disarmed” from the race for more powerful algorithms, larger datasets, and commercial dominance. He wrote that to disarm AI “means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate. therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life.”.
A second takeaway is aimed directly at the people building the systems. Pope Leo issued a “special appeal” to AI developers. saying they “bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility” because every design choice “reflects a vision of humanity.” He urged developers to embed values of transparency. responsibility. and a “careful attention to ensuring that what is being cultivated is a genuine good.”.
He also cautioned against presenting AI as entirely neutral and objective when, in his view, it often reflects and reinforces the biases of its creators.
A third takeaway is the one that connects ethics to the paycheck. Pope Leo warned that AI-related unemployment could become a “true social calamity.” Fears about AI crushing the job market have been part of the conversation since generative AI took off. and some companies have attributed recent job cuts to AI—even as not everyone agrees the labor-market impact will be catastrophic.
Stephen Parker. co-head of global investment strategy at JPMorgan Private Bank. told Business Insider this month that “companies are realizing that AI has the potential to upskill workers” rather than make them obsolete. Pope Leo’s letter acknowledges the possibility of safer work. writing that it is “certainly desirable” for AI to make people’s jobs safer and easier. But he insisted that “the protection of employment opportunities and the irreplaceable role of the individual must remain the general rule.”.
He wrote that the “pursuit of greater profits” cannot justify decisions that eliminate jobs. Mass job losses. he warned. risk creating “human and cultural impoverishment.” Governments and companies. in his view. should prepare for AI disruption before more jobs disappear. “Every introduction of automation and AI should be accompanied by verifiable measures to protect the employment. retraining. and participation of workers. ” he wrote. arguing that this would help ensure AI focuses on “freeing up human time and capabilities. rather than producing exclusion.”.
Put together, the encyclical reads like a single warning with three fronts—who controls AI, how developers build it, and what happens to workers when deployment moves faster than safeguards.
The encyclical letter also lands as a major papal intervention in an ever-contentious AI debate. even as many of the concerns Pope Leo raised in Monday’s letter echo points he has made before as well as concerns raised by AI skeptics. In Vatican City. the pope framed cooperation with a technology leader in the same breath as a call to curb concentration of power and demand protections that can be measured.
Pope Leo XIV AI encyclical monopolization of AI Big Tech Chris Olah Anthropic unemployment automation transparency Vatican