By Lauren Smith, European Conservative.
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 reason 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.