Pope Leo XIV has called for the “disarming” of artificial intelligence, warning that the rapid growth of AI could fuel domination, exclusion, and even death if left unchecked.
Gatekeepers News reports that the Pope, while speaking at the Vatican on Monday during the presentation of his first encyclical titled Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), cautioned against what he described as a dangerous global race for increasingly powerful algorithms and larger datasets.
According to the Catholic leader, the competition is being driven by efforts to secure geopolitical and commercial dominance, raising concerns about the ethical use of AI technology.
Leo warned that the rise of artificial intelligence could create “new forms of slavery” if governments and institutions fail to establish safeguards around its development and use.
“What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating,” the pope said.
He insisted that control of AI-related data should not remain solely in private hands and urged policymakers to protect workers’ rights, safeguard children, and ensure technology serves humanity rather than corporate or political interests.
The pope also called for “robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility”.
“AI now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion, and death,” Leo said. “Like nuclear energy, it must be at the service of all and of the common good.”
The 43,000-word document, regarded as one of the Catholic Church’s highest forms of teaching, was reportedly developed over the past year following Leo’s election as pope.
Among those present at the Vatican event was Christopher Olah, co-founder of AI company Anthropic.
Olah acknowledged that AI firms often operate under commercial pressures that may conflict with ethical considerations.
“AI companies operate inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing,” he said.
He welcomed contributions from external institutions such as the Catholic Church, noting that “the questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community”.
Olah also highlighted several urgent concerns linked to AI, including potential mass job losses, unequal global access to AI benefits, and the growing difficulty of understanding how advanced systems make decisions.
In the encyclical, Pope Leo further warned against the use of AI in warfare, insisting that lethal decisions should never be handed over to machines.
He criticised modern interpretations of the “just war” theory, recently referenced by the administration of Donald Trump in relation to the US-Israel conflict with Iran.
“The just war theory” was now “outdated”, Leo wrote, adding that “no algorithm can make war morally acceptable”.
