Pope Leo XIV calls for ethical discernment in the face of artificial intelligence

Pope Leo The American pontiff, who made AI a major theme at the start of his pontificate, called on President Emmanuel Macron to “place the human person at the heart of all reflection”, during an apostolic visit to France.

“In order not to lose our humanity in the midst of the “paradise of machines” which invade and condition our daily lives, it is urgent to train minds in ethical discernment,” underlined the pope, using a formula from the French writer Georges Bernanos, who criticized the project of an industrial society obsessed with efficiency and profit after the Second World War. “An authentically free society does not impose uniformity, but protects the diversity of consciences, by preventing authoritarian excesses and promoting ethical dialogue,” he recalled.

Faced with growing fears about the risks linked to algorithms - and their potential capacity to dominate the world - even among the actors who develop them, the Church believes it has a role to play. In May, barely a year after his election, the Pope called in a major text to “disarm” AI to “prevent it from dominating humans”. “Magnifica humanitas”, the first encyclical ever devoted to this subject, particularly emphasizes the risk of seeing data, infrastructure and computing power concentrated in the hands of a few players.

In recent years, the Vatican has increased discussions with academics and leaders from Silicon Valley in order to anticipate the anthropological, social and ethical consequences of this revolution, such as the military use of AI and the mass surveillance that it could enable.

The doctrine of Leo XIV is part of a much older history, and his name as pope is not insignificant. In 1891, Leo XIII published “Rerum Novarum”, the great text of the social doctrine of the Church in the face of the upheavals of the time, between the rise of capitalism, the working condition and the relationship between capital and work. Leo

His commitment is not limited to “simple moral interventions outside the technological field”: this 71-year-old modern pope – he is the first to wear a connected watch – wants to structure “a true ecosystem of global governance” of AI, adds the researcher. In May, Leo AI will create gigantic productivity gains. The question is who will have the power and how the dividends will be distributed.

“The amount that the largest companies will invest in AI next year is 700 billion dollars,” Paolo Benanti, a prominent Vatican advisor on AI issues, stressed on Friday on France Culture radio, comparing this sum to the combined GDP of Algeria and Portugal. Such investments “do not allow democracies to intervene,” added the theologian, who suggested the creation of an “international AI tribunal” as a counterweight to potential abuses.

The Pope, who is expected to renew his call to regulate AI on Friday at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), finally warned against the “illusion” according to which science and technology would be “a solution and a consolation to all our suffering”. He expressed particular concern about the risk of "diverting science and technology into lucrative businesses promoting genetic manipulation, surrogacy, the purchase of organs or the offer of planned death."

This pope “is not an activist (...) He does not do politics in the political sense of the term. But each of his actions has an important political significance and he is aware of it,” Eric Salobir, president of the Human Technology Foundation and advisor to the Vatican, explains to AFP: “That is the role of the pope: to stimulate reflection, to challenge and to show a direction.”