Pope Leo, the Human Person, and AI

No algorithm, chatbot, or language model can ever replace what makes us human.

For an organisation that is so often accused of being behind the times, the Catholic Church is proving itself to be remarkably relevant. Pope Leo XIV—the first American to ever sit on the Throne of St. Peter—has made it clear that artificial intelligence will be one of his pontificate’s defining issues. He sees AI not just as a technological upheaval but also as a moral one. Unlike the tech oligarchs giddy about their new digital master, Leo is standing firm against the tyranny of algorithms.

In some of his first public speeches as pope, he emphasised the Church’s role in addressing the ethical challenges posed by AI. In his first official address to the College of Cardinals last month, he warned of the risks it poses to “human dignity, justice, and labour.” Leo—who holds a degree in mathematics—rightly praised the tech’s potential to make all our lives better but was clear that, if left unchecked, it could cause far more harm than good.

Leo XIV’s namesake, Leo XIII, famously defended workers’ rights during the Industrial Revolution, resisting the idea that people were just cogs in a profit-making machine. Now, Leo XIV is doing something similar by refusing to accept that AI is an acceptable replacement for human beings. He sees the Catholic Church as particularly well placed to take on this issue, offering “the treasury of her social teaching” in response to “another industrial revolution.”

As it stands, Leo has plenty of reasons to worry. Across a wide range of industries, AI is already being used to replace human labour. In the world of journalism, major tech news site CNET started using AI to generate articles in 2023, quietly publishing around 75 AI-generated finance explainers. However, it was eventually forced to release a correction after some major errors were spotted. CNET justified the experiment by arguing that it freed up journalists to focus on writing more complex stories, rather than wasting time on recaps and briefings. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that having part of your job taken over by a robot can’t ever be reassuring.

Similarly, Swedish fintech company Klarna announced last year that its AI assistant was handling the workload of 700 full-time human employees in customer service. Klarna claimed it resolved two-thirds of queries without human input at all. The company framed this as a move to allow existing employees to work more efficiently, rather than as a means to reduce its workforce. (However, it recently concluded that the AI assistant had led to a much lower quality of service and the company is now intending to rehire more humans.)

British telecoms company BT Group was more explicit about its intentions. It announced in 2023 that it plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs by 2030, to be replaced by AI, mostly in customer service. More dystopian still, in Tube stations all across London, ads from a tech company called Artisans have begun popping up, telling companies to “stop hiring humans” and boasting that “the era of AI employees is here.” The company itself has admitted that this was a deliberately provocative “ragebait” campaign, but it is nonetheless a worrying sign of things to come.

Some in Silicon Valley have even suggested that AI could replace people in our personal lives, too. Mark Zuckerberg recently claimed that he wouldn’t be surprised if chatbots start compensating for flesh-and-blood friends and romantic partners as a solution to the so-called loneliness epidemic. The statistics show that plenty of people are open to trying this, and a smaller number already have virtual relationships. The huge popularity of services like Replika—a super customisable AI chatbot designed to act as a digital companion—is an indication of how normalised these kinds of arrangements could become.

For Leo and the Church, defending humanity against AI is a natural choice. Catholics believe—as all Christians do—that people are made in the image of God. Assuming that technology can replace or be superior to that image is therefore deeply distressing. In January, before the death of Pope Francis, the Vatican released a document called Antiqua et nova (“Ancient and New”), laying out these risks. “By turning to AI as a perceived ‘Other’ greater than itself, with which to share existence and responsibilities, humanity risks creating a substitute for God. However, it is not AI that is ultimately deified and worshipped, but humanity itself—which, in this way, becomes enslaved to its own work.”

This should matter to those outside the Church, too. Even if you don’t believe that humanity was created by God and imbued with souls, there is a serious danger in assuming there is nothing innate that makes humans special. There is something to us that is more than just inputs and outputs—something that cannot be replicated by code.

None of this is to say that AI cannot be used to do great things. Already it has helped us to accelerate drug discovery, deepen our understanding of diseases and pandemics, improve weather forecasting, and make the world easier to navigate for those with disabilities. Leo himself acknowledges that AI has “immense potential” to be “used for the good of all”—provided it is wielded responsibly.

In an era when people are increasingly cynical about the worth of humanity, it’s refreshing to hear Pope Leo so willing to speak up for the soul. His focus on human dignity is a reminder that no algorithm, chatbot, or language model can ever replace what makes us human.

(This article appeared originally in The European Conservative and is republished with permission.)