Guardian readers in the US spoke of fears about unregulated AI in response to the pope’s encyclical warning about the risks of the technology
In his first major papal text since assuming leadership of the Catholic church last year, Pope Leo issued a stark warning about the rise of artificial intelligence this week, denouncing the “culture of power” driving the AI age.
Calling for the “most rigorous” ethical constraints on AI – which he described as one of the greatest threats facing humanity today – the first US-born pope also warned of “new forms of slavery” emerging through the digital economy.
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The intelligent and thoughtful encyclical is an important warning of the uses and misuses of a rapidly developing technology. Silicon Valley is wrong to dismiss it
Often I’m asked if I think that the novels of the future will all be written by AI. It’s not so much a question as a provocation. Do I worry that a machine can do what I do, only better? I usually say something like: “No algorithm is going to write Anna Karenina!” which is also not a real answer.
So I’m grateful to Pope Leo XIV, the American pope, for his recently issued letter to the world, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. It’s a long (more than 40,00 words), intelligent and thoughtful encyclical in which the pope addresses the uses and misuses of a rapidly developing technology. Now when someone asks my opinion of AI, I can refer them to the pope’s letter, or at least chapter three.
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Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical on artificial intelligence includes a statement that warrants serious attention from technologists and policymakers: “Technology is never neutral.” Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”) is a clarion call to all people to act with courage and solidarity as we enter an age already being transformed by artificial intelligence, the greatest change in…
Dr Susan Oman on a campaign that is designed to raise public awareness of AI
Your editorial on Pope Leo XIV’s call to centre human dignity in AI debate makes an important argument (The Guardian view on the Pope and Claude: Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI is right to put humanity first, 25 May). While governments, faith leaders and tech bosses debate the future of AI, one group is consistently left out of the conversation: the public, the very people whose lives the technology is shaping.
Last week, I gave evidence on AI sovereignty to the all-party parliamentary group on AI that aligns with Pope Leo’s position. I argued that AI sovereignty was a series of deeply human and societal questions that exceed technical, material and macroeconomic concerns. I showed that public concern about AI has risen by 10% in two years, and that 91% believe fairness should be prioritised over economic gain. Yet there is no national programme to help the public understand, trust or have a say in AI.
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We’d like to hear what Americans think about the pope’s latest remarks criticizing the rapid development of AI
The first American pope has made waves since taking the position. However, after his latest remarks – that AI could make civilization less human and a plea for governments globally to actively slow AI development – people in the US have been divided.
Some Americans celebrated the commentary, with former New York council member Brad Lander calling it “bold moral leadership” and Florida representative Anna Paulina Luna telling her constituents on social media that she concurs with Pope Leo’s sentiments. In contrast, Doug Burgum, the US secretary of the interior, pushed back and said he didn’t “know that tech editorializing was part of the role of being Pope”; while David Sacks, the former White House AI and crypto czar, posted on X that government regulation of AI poses serious dangers.
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It's possible that AI was used to write parts of Pope Leo XIV's latest encyclical about AI's impact on humanity. An analysis by Linch Zhang posted on the forum LessWrong found certain paragraphs of Magnifica Humanitas to be between 40 percent and 100 percent written by AI, according to the popular AI detector Pangram.
The document includes known traits that appear in AI-generated writing, such as a higher use of the word "genuinely" - which crops up in writing by Anthropic's Claude - than previous encyclicals, Zhang says. Another person ran the text of the document section by section through Pangram, finding that 62 percent of its first cha …
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The Holy Father referenced The Lord of the Rings in his encyclical about AI—an expert (if unintentional) troll of tech billionaires who keep misinterpreting the series.
