A day after Pope Leo XIV released his AI encyclical, Vatican City found broad support among parts of the AI community—while other prominent voices questioned the church’s framing, and policy figures also worried the wrong kind of oversight could follow.
By the time the Vatican’s message reached the tech world, it had already sparked a rare kind of digital friction: agreement over power and risk, but disagreement over what AI even is—and who should control it.
A day after Pope Leo XIV released his much anticipated encyclical on AI, the response from the AI community has been mainly positive, with some quibbling over the nature and potential of the technology.
The encyclical—titled Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence—was released in Vatican City on Monday. The Vatican described an encyclical as a high-importance teaching document issued by the Pope. Broadly. the document aims to demarcate the fundamental differences between humans and machines and warn about the dangers of allowing AI to be controlled and distributed by a small group of people.
Pope Leo denounced what he called the “culture of power” driving the AI race. He pointed to a small set of wealthy investors and tech companies currently controlling the development and distribution of the technology.
The concern didn’t arrive in isolation. The pope’s stance mirrors a wider religious debate around AI that has emerged across faith traditions in recent years. Religious leaders and scholars from Christianity. Judaism. Islam. and Buddhism have wrestled with everything from AI-written sermons and chatbot theologians to the technology’s impact on labor. misinformation. warfare. and the environment.
Some communities have embraced AI tools for research, translation, and religious education. Many leaders, however, have emphasized that machines cannot replace divine inspiration, moral judgment, or the human relationship to faith. Pope Leo has previously warned priests against using AI to prepare homilies. arguing that artificial intelligence “will never be able to share faith.”.
Within the AI research community, Magnifica Humanitas has landed with force—particularly on the issue of values and control.
Chris Olah. a researcher who participated in the Vatican’s process of shaping the ideas behind the encyclical. said in a companion statement that it “clearly raises questions beyond computer science.” Olah added: “The machinery that makes this possible is the work of math and programming and science. But what character we choose. how it interacts with the world. how it ought to interact with the world—these are more clearly questions for the humanities. for religion. for philosophy. for society at large.”.
The encyclical itself is 85 pages long. The Vatican said it was informed by extensive conversations with scientists, engineers, educators, political leaders, and families.
For some tech figures, Pope Leo’s warnings struck a chord that goes beyond theology and into the mechanics of markets and institutions.
Author and systems architect Daniel Jefferies broadly agreed with the pope’s warning that AI will reflect the values of the people and institutions controlling it. On X. Jefferies wrote: “The Pope is right: AI takes on the characteristics of those who build it. finance it. and regulate it. ” and argued that concentrated corporate control over AI could create “digital oligarchies” resembling modern-day East India Companies. AI pioneer and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun retweeted Jefferies’ post.
Another Turing Award winner, Yoshua Bengio, echoed the pope’s concern about AI’s destructive potential. Bengio wrote: “Like nuclear energy, AI must be at the service of all and of the common good. Decisions about technology must never be separated from conscience and responsibility.”
Still, the encyclical’s framing has not convinced everyone.
Not everyone in the AI community agrees with the Vatican’s view of what AI is. or what it could eventually become. The document draws a firm distinction between AI systems and human beings. arguing that machines cannot possess consciousness. morality. or lived experience. The text says: “So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences. do not possess a body. do not feel joy or pain. do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love. work. friendship or responsibility mean.”.
AI commentator Zvi Mowshowitz pushed back on that premise. In a Substack post. he wrote: “The central claim. wherein Pope Leo denies that AIs can think or importantly be minds. is wrong. as Olah points out in his statements.” Mowshowitz added that. “Without the understanding of what AI is capable of becoming. the document effectively only deals with relatively mundane AI dangers and changes. although that on its own is still rather quite a lot to deal with and discuss.”.
Dean Ball. an AI policy analyst and writer. said the church should focus on helping humans flourish as AI evolves further. On X, Ball posted: “Some think I want the Pope to ‘ensoul’ AI or acknowledge AI feelings. I don’t. What I want is for the Church to contemplate what *humans* should do as we are eclipsed as the smartest entities on the planet. at least for many reasonable people’s definitions of the word ‘smart.’”.
Then there is the question that follows power wherever it appears: regulation, and what it could enable.
President Donald Trump has yet to post about the encyclical on Truth Social. But his former AI “czar,” David Sacks, weighed in. Sacks isn’t worried about letting a small set of AI companies effectively regulate themselves; he’s worried about giving the government the power to do it. On X. Sacks argued that giving governments broad authority over AI in the name of safety could ultimately enable censorship. surveillance. and social control.
Sacks invoked both George Orwell and the Latin phrase “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes” (translation: “Who will guard the guardians?”). He wrote: “The oldest questions of human nature and authority don’t disappear in the AI age. They become newly relevant.”
After Sacks’ post, multiple prominent voices in the AI world weighed in. Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue argued that “the most important AI risk is concentration.” Cognitive scientist Gary Marcus warned against “leaving unelected private companies the ability to censor, surveil and control citizens.”
The Trump administration has gone to great lengths to keep the AI industry free of government oversight and regulation. It has been influenced by tech nouveau right figures like Sacks and Marc Andreessen, the account notes.
Despite that overlap in themes—power. concentration. and who gets to steer the future—one thread stands out: the tech nouveau right crowd has largely not responded to Pope Leo’s treatise. There have been no public comments yet from Elon Musk. Andreessen. Palmer Luckey. Balaji Srinivasan. Keith Rabois. Joe Lonsdale. or Jason Calacanis.
The juxtaposition is stark. Magnifica Humanitas arrives warning against a small group controlling development and distribution. and parts of the AI community hear the message as a direct call to accountability. But when the conversation drifts from who holds power to how power should be governed. disagreements snap back into focus—over what AI is. what it will become. and which institutions should carry the responsibility.
Pope Leo XIV Magnifica Humanitas AI encyclical Vatican AI regulation Chris Olah Daniel Jefferies Yann LeCun Yoshua Bengio Zvi Mowshowitz Dean Ball David Sacks Hugging Face Clem Delangue Gary Marcus tech nouveau right
AI is getting involved in everything now, jeez.
So the Pope wrote an encyclical about AI?? Sounds like someone is scared of robots taking over, but also… control by a small group? Isn’t that just big tech already lol.
Wait, I thought encyclicals are like letters to Catholics, not a policy guide for Silicon Valley. If they’re worried about the wrong oversight, that’s kinda ironic because the Vatican probably has no idea how any of this works. Also “Magnifica Humanitas” sounds like a brand new AI company name.
I don’t get why tech leaders are “divided.” The church says not to let it be controlled by a small group and everybody should agree with that. But then the article says people disagree over what AI even is… like it’s all the same? Plus I’m pretty sure AI already has oversight, it’s called lawyers and courts. Vatican acting like they discovered AI yesterday.