Thursday, August 6, 2026

On Pope Leo XIV and Artificial Intelligence

The relatively new Pope Leo XIV has made clear his intention
to write an encyclical about artificial intelligence as soon as he
was chosen to be pope. This has made Magnifica Humanitas 
possibly the most widely anticipated encyclical since at least
Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. While it 
cautions against "equating this type of 'intelligence' with that
of human beings", it also acknowledges that technology is a 
wonderful part of humanity's God-given capacity for creation 
and invention while rejecting the Luddite view that tech is 
something that is anti-human and therefore anti-humanity.

Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum  is the Catholic Church's
insistence that no new system or technology can justify 
reducing human beings, made in God's image, into cogs
of a larger machine. Humans are therefore ends in themselves,
and that proper end is defined by God, who created people
and casts down the kings and queens from their thrones 
while lifting up the lowly --- meaning this is His way of
exalting the downtrodden and toppling the high and mighty.
Pope Leo XIV 's document gets more than sufficient backing
from Pope Leo XIII's work, giving it intellectual heft.

As a Catholic and as one who has mixed emotions in regards
to artificial intelligence and how it would be utilized, your
curious Peasant is most eager to read the pope's coming
encyclical.


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