Silvianne Aspray is a theologian based at the University of Notre Dame, Australia and St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, USA.
When Pope Leo XIV presented his new encyclical Magnifica Humanitas to the public, Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind the AI known as Claude, was there, too. An atheist, he nevertheless welcomed the Pope taking a stance on AI, stressing how computer scientists like himself need thoughtful, critical voices from outside of their lab. Those in the lab, like himself, can do the technical work of developing and “growing” large language models, but – Olah said – this is not all the work that needs to be done, because AI raises questions that go beyond computer science. Questions about what it means to be human and who we want to be as societies, for example. These can only be answered by the humanities, by religion and society at large.
This is why Olah welcomes moral voices like that of the Catholic Church to be thoughtfully critical of his own work at Anthropic. In his presentation, he acknowledged quite frankly that AI labs like Anthropic operate inside a set of incentives and constraints, such as “the pressure to stay commercially viable, and to stay at the frontier of research, geopolitical pressure, and the older, plainer pressures of pride and ambition.” All these pressures, Olah admitted, “can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing.” And because of that, he said AI developers need people outside who care about things going well, who pay close attention, and who are willing to say hard things. In his new document, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV does just that.
Leo XIV himself stressed how this was a document born from him listening sincerely not just to scientists and engineers, but also to political leaders, public officials, as well as parents and teachers. He believes we are facing a transformation of huge magnitude, and it is not enough for anyone – especially the Church – to merely watch and hope for the best. No: we need to talk about what kind of future we desire.
Magnifica Humanitas is clear that AI is not in itself evil. Like all technology, it can be a force for good in the world. The key issue is not the use of technological tools like AI as such, but the vision that underlies it. AI is not morally neutral, because it embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores and focuses on. It takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it. These necessarily embody a certain vision of what is the Good, and what humankind is or ought to be. In short: AI has a moral architecture. It is this architecture that we ought to scrutinize, because we need to be careful what we are building and how we are building it.
Using biblical images, the Pope sets before us two ways of building in this construction site of our time: We should not build like the builders of the Tower of Babel, but instead like Nehemiah when he rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. The project of Babel was fueled by pride and the illusion of self-sufficiency. God had no place on Babel’s construction site. In fact, there were no real human relationships there either: everything was subjugated to the one goal of building the highest tower possible. Any diversity among the builders was eliminated, homogenized.
Not so on the other building site in the book of Nehemiah. This project begins with Nehemiah fasting, praying and interceding for the people before taking action. He did not impose any solution from above. Instead, he convened all the families and assigned each of them a section of the broken city-wall of Jerusalem to rebuild. He listened to their concerns, coordinated their efforts, and addressed any opposition. Here, a new city is born not out of pride or ambition, but through the shared responsibility of all: men, women, priests, artisans, heads of households and young people all pay a part. In other words, this project does not just build with stones, it builds and rebuilds relationships.
The Pope invites Christians and all people of good will to see in Nehemiah a guide for how to act in our era of digital transformation. We are not to be mere passive spectators of social and cultural fractures, but men and women prepared to enter the construction site of history. Like Nehemiah, we too are called to listen, pray and courageously address challenges not through a power that dominates, but through shared power.
In other words, the primary choice for us is not ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to AI, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem. Will we choose a power that claims to dominate the heavens, or be a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence?
Pope Leo XIV raises this question for all of us, and he wants to empower us all to make the right choice. Thinking that we are too small, and that the problems are too big for us is a real temptation, but – the Pope reminds us – “no one is without responsibility”. We need not change the tide of the times, but we all have our areas of action. Here we can choose whether to fuel the “mentality of force” through indifference, cynicism, lies or hatred or preserve the “mindset of peace.” Such a mindset, he reminds us, is first of all built by being mindful of our words. The Pope uses the surprisingly strong language of needing to “disarm” our words: our language must be characterized by truth, justice and love. Time and again, we must put ourselves in the shoes of those who are the victims of injustice and violence. And finally, we must cultivate among us practices of shared responsibility.
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