Vatican: Pope Leo XIV, in his first formal address to the College of Cardinals, called artificial intelligence one of the greatest challenges facing humanity—saying it was the very reason he chose his papal name.
The first US national to ever hold the position of the Pope, the Chicago-born-Robert Prevost, addressing the senior clergy members, said “In our own day, the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour,” according to Gizmodo.
He added that he chose his Cardinal name Leo as a signal of his intention to follow in the footsteps of Pope Leo XIII, who he said worked to address “the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution”.
Pope Leo XIII, who led the Catholic Church from 1878 to 1903, is perhaps best remembered for his groundbreaking 1891 encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum’ (“On the Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor”).
This landmark document addressed the social and economic upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, advocating for the protection of workers’ rights and calling attention to “the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class”.
Among its most influential positions was its endorsement of labour unions as a legitimate means for workers to defend their interests.
While Leo XIII was neither anti-science or anti-industry, he was against the exploitation of workers through the use of technology, highlighting the complex relationship of the Vatican Church, and its engagement with the dynamics of scientific-technological progress, human relationships, and social structures.
This falls in line with Pope Leo XIV’s philosophy, and why he cites AI as a potential threat to humanity, much like his predecessor Pope Francis.
Pope Francis had also identified AI as a potential risk to humanity if not developed and deployed ethically and in a human-centred way.
Francis issued ‘Antiqua et Nova’, the “Note on the relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence,” in which he insisted that any developments in the field of AI must “serve human dignity and not harm it.”
He also publicly spoke about the issue during the AI 2024 G7 Summit, where he described AI as the start of a “cognitive-industrial revolution” and warned that it posed the risk of causing “greater injustice between advanced and developing nations or between dominant and oppressed social classes.”
He also delivered remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year before his passing, in which he warned that “human dignity and fraternity are frequently subordinated in the pursuit of efficiency” during the advancement of new technologies, and called on those involved with the development of AI to ensure it “promotes human dignity, the vocation of the human person, and the common good.”
UNI
