Pope Leo XIV calls for strict AI regulation in his first encyclical

Pope Leo XIV has presented his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, dedicated to artificial intelligence and its impact on humanity.

The document was unveiled at a Vatican event that featured Christopher Olah, the co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind the popular Claude chatbot. Olah was the only representative of the technology industry to speak at the presentation.

In the encyclical, the pontiff called for strict regulation of AI and warned that the technology must not be developed solely in the interests of profit, power, and private corporations.

• According to Leo XIV, AI is already affecting the labor market, social inequality, education, healthcare, and the military.
• The pope spoke out specifically against the use of AI in weapons, stating that machines should not be allowed to make independent decisions over human life and death.
• He also criticized the concentration of power over AI in the hands of major technology companies.

"I accept your invitation to walk together, to listen and to speak – and together, to find the way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence," the pontiff said.

Pope Leo XIV called for transparency, oversight, and legal control over the development of AI. Christopher Olah, in turn, noted that AI companies have commercial, geopolitical, and personal incentives that may come into conflict with the interests of society as a whole.

Olah called for the conversation about the future of AI to extend beyond developers, drawing in governments, religious leaders, civil society, and independent experts.

He warned that the rapid pace of AI development could lead to large-scale displacement of workers, deepening inequality, and the emergence of increasingly complex systems whose inner workings are difficult to explain, even for specialists.