Almost a Blasphemy

Few topics in recent years have attracted more attention—or more investment capital—than “artificial intelligence.” And since the beginning of Leo XIV’s pontificate, a series of hints from Rome have suggested that the pope himself intends to wade into the hype cycle with a papal encyclical addressing the “ethical challenges posed by artificial intelligence.” Leo himself has encouraged this expectation. In one of his first public speeches after his election, he evoked the efforts of his predecessor Leo XIII to develop a Catholic response to the changed social conditions of the Industrial Revolution, and explained his choice of regnal name in terms of a mission to apply the Church’s social teaching to “another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”