How does Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical help the Church respond to the opportunities and challenges presented by AI?

When Leo warns us that “the technocratic paradigm in which we are immersed, which is amplified by the digital evolution and AI, threatens to normalize an anti-human vision,” he is warning us about a world that centralizes power and meaning among some while excluding the many. This contrasts with the Civilization of Love which welcomes the poor, the wounded, the unborn, and the migrant. Thus, a litmus test for a Leonine society is whether it welcomes the contributions of all, especially the smallest and the most forgotten. This is not just a work for the powerful; rather, the “civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization.” We all need to be such bulwarks against dehumanization.

AI is changing the world faster than moral theorists can keep up, but an encyclical aims to frame a social issue in a global manner that calls readers to see what is at stake, who will be impacted, and how the most vulnerable and marginalized among the human family will be affected. 

Pope Leo XIV’s earlier exhortation included not only the material poor, but the sick and elderly, the orphan, those who are lonely, those who experience spiritual or moral poverty, those who are socially marginalized and culturally poor, those who lack space or rights or freedom. Each of these—and all of us—will be dramatically impacted by AI. How can we build a world that cares for the poor among us—who are us—while creating a technology that serves the common good and upholds human dignity?

Readers of Leo’s first social encyclical will surely find a continuation of the call to care for our common home and to avoid harmful practices that worsen the living conditions of the most vulnerable.

—From Church Life Journal

Adequately assessing AI's role requires situating technology within the broader framework of biological development. Technology is integral to evolution. Understanding technology's relationship to human welfare means grasping its role within the flow of biological and human life.

AI personhood follows a new relational logic providing creative engagement spaces. One lives not in binary mode (me and you) but in creative interrelatedness. The "I" flows from constitutive relationships of shared existence where the middle—the place of creative engagement—forms identity's basis.

Gen AI is already here, seeking a better world and a living God. The question remains whether institutional religion can evolve quickly enough to meet them where they are, or whether it will remain trapped in binary thinking while humanity moves toward posthuman futures.

—From Global Sisters Report