Pope Leo XIV's First Encyclical: AI Must Not Become a Tower of Babel

Pope Leo XIV. Photo: Simone Risoluti / Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images

In his first encyclical, the pontiff called to "disarm" AI to protect humanity from the risks associated with this technology. "'Disarm' means not to reject technologies, but to prevent them from dominating humanity," the Pope explained his position.

In his programmatic address to the Catholic Church, Leo XIV also called for freeing artificial intelligence from the monopolistic control of "only a few multinational corporations" and warned against using this technology to achieve geopolitical or commercial gains, Deutsche Welle writes.

The risk, according to the Pope, lies in people being reduced "to the role of mere cogs in a system aimed at ever-greater efficiency."

Pope Leo used two biblical images to describe the choice humanity faces.

"The main choice is not between 'yes' or 'no' to technologies, but rather between building Babylon or rebuilding Jerusalem," he wrote.

In the Bible, the Tower of Babel symbolizes a grand, top-down project where decisions are made under the influence of ambition, for profit at any cost, and which seeks to make everyone uniform, the Pope writes in his text. In the rebuilding of Jerusalem, however, different people worked together to reconstruct the ruined walls and return to fraternal coexistence, the Pope added.

"Small but extremely influential groups are capable of controlling information flows and consumer behavior, dictating the course of democratic processes, and impacting economic dynamics," the pontiff noted.

Therefore, according to him,

"it is extremely important that the implementation of AI — especially in those areas concerning public good and fundamental rights — be accompanied by clear criteria and effective protective mechanisms."

The Pope proposed developing an "ethical code" for AI, based on criteria of general social justice, and also ensuring the regulation of user data processing.

However, he emphasized, these measures will prove useless "if moral frameworks are determined only by the chosen few."

Observers interpreted this statement as a criticism of American tech billionaires.

In his encyclical, the Pope also sharply criticized the "culture of force" that normalizes war and encourages rearmament. He called for overcoming the theory of "just war" — a doctrine that has been used to justify global conflicts. Military force can only be applied for "self-defense in the strictest sense," the pontiff is convinced.

Leo XIV also warned against the use of AI-based weapons.

"No algorithm exists that can make war morally acceptable," he stressed.

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