Pope Leo XIV Says AI Poses New Challenges for ‘Human Dignity’

The rising prevalence of synthetic intelligence throughout quite a few industries has been laborious to disregard, even for the Catholic Church.

Pope Leo XIV, the first-ever US-born pope, addressed the Faculty of Cardinals on Saturday for the primary time for the reason that papal conclave. In his speech, the brand new pope mentioned synthetic intelligence influenced his determination to take the title Leo XIV.

“Sensing myself referred to as to proceed on this identical path, I selected to take the title Leo XIV. There are completely different causes for this, however primarily as a result of Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum’ addressed the social query within the context of the primary nice industrial revolution,” Leo XIV mentioned. “In our personal day, the Church affords to everybody the treasury of her social educating in response to a different industrial revolution and to developments within the area of synthetic intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice, and labor.”

Saturday’s tackle is not the primary time the Catholic Church has mirrored on synthetic intelligence.

In January, the Holy See, the governing physique of the Catholic Church, printed a prolonged notice on the connection between synthetic intelligence and human intelligence. The notice mentioned the Catholic Church “encourages the development of science, expertise, the humanities, and different types of human endeavor” however sought to deal with the “anthropological and moral challenges raised by AI — points which can be notably important, as one of many targets of this expertise is to mimic the human intelligence that designed it.”

Leo XIV’s predecessor, Pope Francis, additionally mentioned AI in a January 2024 message printed by the Holy See.

“The speedy unfold of astonishing improvements, whose workings and potential are past the power of most of us to know and admire, has confirmed each thrilling and disorienting,” Pope Francis mentioned. “This leads inevitably to deeper questions concerning the nature of human beings, our distinctiveness and the way forward for the species homo sapiens within the age of synthetic intelligence. How can we stay absolutely human and information this cultural transformation to serve a very good goal?”

Pope Francis added, “Presently in historical past, which dangers turning into wealthy in expertise and poor in humanity, our reflections should start with the human coronary heart.”