“Like any product of human creativity, AI can go to positive or negative ends,” Francis said in January. “When used in a way that respect human dignity and promotes the well -being of individuals and communities, it can positively contribute to human vocation. However, as in all areas where humans are called to make decisions, the shadow of evil is also coming here. Where human freedom allows the possibility of choosing what is wrong, the moral evaluation of this technology will need to take into account the way it is directed and used.”
History is repeated with a new technology
Although Pope Francis directed the call to respect human dignity against AI, it is worth being a little deeper in historical inspiration for the election of Leo XIV name.
In the rerum cerum novarum of 1891, the previous Leo XIII directly confronted the work work of the Industrial revolutionwhich generated unprecedented richness and productive capacity But it came with serious human costs. At that time, factory conditions had created what the Pope called “Misery and misery prescribe so unfairly about the majority of the working class.” The workers faced 16 -hour days, child labor, dangerous machinery and salaries that barely supported life.
The 1891 encyclical rejected both capitalism and socialism without control, proposing the Catholic social doctrine that defended the rights of workers to form unions, gain living wages and rest on Sundays. Leo XIII argued that the work had an inherent dignity and that employers had moral obligations to their workers. The document shaped modern Catholic social education and influenced labor movements worldwide, establishing the Church as a defender of workers trapped between industrial capital and revolutionary socialism.
Just as mechanization interrupted traditional work in the 1890s, artificial intelligence now potentially threatens employment patterns and human dignity so that Pope Leo XIV believes that they demand similar moral leadership of the Church.
“In our own day,” Leo XIV concluded in his formal speech on Saturday, “the Church offers all the treasure of its social education in response to another industrial revolution and developments in the field of artificial intelligence that raise new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and work.”
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