By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
At the end of May, on the anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s seminal encyclical, Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIV issued the first encyclical of his pontificate, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”).
In the encyclical, Pope Leo XIV uses the biblical images of the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls by Nehemiah to frame the dangers and possibilities of the digital age.
The encyclical is a long read (more than 40,000 words) and it is not an easy read but for anyone willing to make the effort it offers a way to discern both the threats and the opportunities that the technological revolution represented by artificial intelligence offers mankind.
While Pope Leo XIV is in no sense a Luddite, his primary message is that technology is never neutral. He urges society to step away from "Babel." The Tower of Babel symbolizes a humanity that tries to "reach heaven without God."
There followed a confusion of tongues. Without proper guardrails, artificial intelligence and the technological revolution with the same hubris as the builders of the tower will produce not progress but fragmentation, confusion, and the reduction of the human person to a type of “machine”.
On the other hand, Nehemiah and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem represent ethical reconstruction, shared responsibility, and human solidarity. The way Nehemiah led the people to rebuild Jerusalem offers a model in which technology protects the vulnerable, promotes the common good and maintains fraternal coexistence.
The crisis of our times, heightened by the emergence of AI, is an anthropological one: What is the meaning of the human person?
Thus, the subtitle of the encyclical is, “On safeguarding the Human Person in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”. We are, the Pope reminds us, “creatures made in the image and likeness of God”.
This gives us dignity and a sense of agency that cannot be reduced to an algorithm. Artificial intelligence systems can never be comparable to our human dignity or to our vocation and capacity to live in relationships and communion. Human experience, human expression, and human intelligence are divine gifts.
The encyclical affirms the principles of the Church’s social doctrine that emerged after the publication of Rerum Novarum.
These principles, namely the common good, solidarity and subsidiarity, are tools for evaluating and guiding the ongoing transformation of our world by AI.
We should insist that the benefits of emerging technologies be shared equitably and that all levels of society be included in the policy decisions that will affect their lives.
Technological change will result in much “creative destruction” as many jobs disappear while others are created. Provisions need to be made to provide “safety nets” for those affected, especially the most vulnerable and poor.
AI can be a blessing; but it can also be a curse if we don’t establish clear guardrails for its use. Humanity, the Pope is telling us, faces today a pivotal choice: either to build a new Tower of Babel or to rebuild Jerusalem.
