SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) – Pope Leo issued a warning about the potential risks of artificial intelligence in his first major letter as pope.
Paul Scherz, a theology professor at the university, said the pope is not calling for a ban on technology but is focused on who controls it.
Pope Leo released the encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, on Monday. Scherz called it the church’s first major statement focused on AI ethics.
“This is an encyclical that’s trying to kind of get ahead of the problem and really address it as we’re designing and implementing these technologies,” Scherz said.
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Scherz said the pope’s warning is less about the technology itself but more about the way it is being built and controlled. He said control of AI is concentrated in very few hands, which can leave vulnerable communities without a voice or protection.
“Leo has called it a second industrial revolution,” Scherz said. “He argues we need to develop regulations through a broad-based method that takes all voices into account, especially those of the weak, the poor, the vulnerable.”
Scherz said one of the pope’s biggest critiques is the way global leaders talk about AI as a competition, which can push safety, ethics and human impact to the side.
“It’s the race between the U.S. and China. It’s a race between technology companies designed, artificial general intelligence, right? He thinks that kind of competition language and the language of the race is really problematic because it means that we’re not taking care, that we’re not talking about these broader kind of issues around the vulnerable,” Scherz said.
The Notre Dame professor said the core message is consistent with Catholic teaching: making human dignity a priority.
“He’s trying to give principles by which we can design policies, by which Catholics and all people of goodwill can develop new laws and regulations around these technologies,” Scherz said.
After Pope Leo delivered his encyclical Monday, AI company Anthropic, which is known for its chatbot Claude, asked the pope to collaborate on building a more human-centered AI tool. The pope accepted.
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