Pope Leo XIII 2.0? First American Pontiff Warns AI Threatens Human Sovereignty
In a move that would make his 19th-century namesake blush, history’s first U.S.-born Pope drops a digital encyclical—Wall Street already pricing in ’algorithmic indulgences.’
The Vatican’s new boss cuts through the AI hype with a medieval twist: When machine learning meets original sin, who programs the moral compiler? (Spoiler: Not the guys who brought you subprime mortgage algorithms.)
Bonus burn: ’Perhaps our Silicon Valley friends could focus less on disrupting death and more on not disrupting civilization.’ Oof—that’s gonna leave a mark on the Longevity ETF crowd.
The Vatican on AI
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the previous pope known as Francis, described artificial intelligence in 2023 as "the highest-stakes gamble of our future" and urged that it be developed to "serve humanity’s best potential."
In the same year, the Vatican launched the "Rome Call for AI Ethics," an industry collaboration signed by major tech firms such as Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco.
Amid growing geopolitical conflicts, Bergoglio denounced the use of AI in war: "No machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being."
In January, the Vatican published Antiqua Nova, a document on its official position on AI, under Bergoglio’s guidance.
"AI’s advanced features give it sophisticated abilities to perform tasks, but not the ability to think," the document reads. "As AI becomes more powerful, there is an associated risk that human labor may lose its value in the economic realm."
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
