Terence Corcoran: The Pope on AI 'slavery' versus liberation

With his 43,000-word encyclical on the rising risks lurking in new technology and artificial intelligence, Pope Leo XIV has generated a global outpouring of supportive commentary and alarmist fear-mongering on the threat AI poses to humanity. Titled “Magnifica Humanitas: On safeguarding the human person in the time of Artificial Intelligence,” the encyclical portrays AI as a dangerous imposition on humanity by market monopolists and others with authoritarian tendencies.

Dozens of now standard themes about the threat of AI are raised in the encyclical, along with dozens of new extreme comparisons, often with religious associations. In one section, the Pope compares AI with the imposition of slavery. “The fight against new forms of slavery is a decisive test for the ethical discernment of AI and digital transformation.”

Later he moves on to AI as a military weapon. “Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of ‘armed’ competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance … To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life.”

AI of course is already being used by the world’s military institutions to build better weapons and detection systems, but so are steel, aluminum, nuclear energy and fossil fuels. Not much is added by a Papal fixation on AI as a unique military threat. Who knows? Its efficiency might even lead to fewer wars.

The encyclical is predictably rich in religious references that are linked to economic ideas. “Our world is filled with attempts to seize control of markets and spheres of influence, often shrouded in reassuring rhetoric and seductive ideologies. Yet our hearts yearn for an approach that is wise and benevolent, akin to that which Mary praises in her Magnificat, when she proclaims that God’s mercy extends in every generation to those who fear him. This plan of mercy continues to unfold throughout history today, even amid the rapid and unsettling changes brought by algorithms and global networks, and it becomes a compass in the digital era for living our lives according to the Gospel.”

Out of 43,000 words that’s the best I can do to convey the message of Magnifica Humanitas in this space. In summary, the Pope portrays AI as an imposition on humanity by tech and state authoritarians that in turn needs to be controlled via authoritarian means under the guidance of the Church. As The Wall Street Journal editorialized this week, there is “no doubt that as AI develops it will need an ethical rudder.” But the Pope’s “faith in a beneficent state is misplaced.”