The world has entered the age of techno-effervescence and its socio-emotional antonym, techno-panic.

The pope’s plea is pithy and on point: Artificial intelligence must be a tool at the service of humanity, love, and work. It should not be a tool that fosters domination, exclusion, and war.

How quickly this moment has arrived. And who better to bring it into sharper focus than the first American pontiff?

Only a few years ago, artificial intelligence felt abstract: a distant cousin of robotics, automation, and the internet. Today, it shapes the way we work, communicate, govern, and relate to one another.

Yet for many, the rise of AI also raises deeply-seated human fears.

These are not merely technological questions. They are moral questions. Civic questions. Existential questions. Human questions.

That is why Pope Leo XIV’s framework is so significant. Magnifica Humanitas argues that technological advancement must be centered on human dignity, agency, and connection. The encyclical reminds us that while artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies may be engineered in laboratories and deployed through markets, their consequences will ultimately be measured in human flourishing.

By personally presiding over the release of the new encyclical and choosing to have the cofounder of Anthropic, a company at the center of a global debate about the future of AI, speak alongside him, the pope ensured the world would be watching.

Pope Leo greeted Anthropic cofounder Christopher Olah during the presentation of the Pope’s encyclical at the Vatican on May 25. Alessandra Tarantino/AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino

The encyclical is rooted in the history of the church’s social doctrine and in the encyclicals of his predecessors, above all this pope’s namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who wrote during the Industrial Revolution on the need to protect workers’ dignity and rights. It is also inspired by the encyclicals of his immediate predecessor, Pope Francis. Pope Leo points to the work ahead that will value “the cooperation between generations, peoples, disciplines and cultures.”

This mirrors the work underway across government and higher education worldwide, including here in Massachusetts.

Last February, a delegation of Massachusetts leaders joined me at the Vatican to help carry forward the work of Pope Francis, who first articulated a plea for an “algor-ethics” to govern AI for the common good. Two of Governor Maura Healey’s Cabinet secretaries joined UMass Boston academics and corporate leaders from Boston, along with leaders from around the world, to discuss the pope’s call to harness AI’s emerging powers while confronting the urgent ethical and human challenges it presents.

Now, the world sees Leo’s vision for this new world of super-technologies, and it is up to us on the ground to turn his wisdom into action.

Here at UMass Boston, our students and faculty are eagerly embracing AI discussions to help shape this future. We are home to the nation’s first university-based institute dedicated to optimizing and democratizing the use of AI tools across a broad range of professions.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Boston Public Schools launched a landmark $1 million public-private partnership to make Boston the first major American city to ensure that all high school graduates are AI-proficient. And Healey partnered with Google to provide residents free access to AI training and career certificate programs designed to boost our state’s workforce skills.

Pope Leo’s bold call reveals his deeply American sensibilities in its “healthy realism,” pragmatism, and humane heart. Now it is up to all of us to listen and act.

This is where an unexpected bridge may be forming.

Not between church and state in the traditional sense but between faith and reason, moral leadership and civic leadership, innovation and responsibility, and what we can build and what we should build.

After Magnifica Humanitas, the conversation surrounding AI will no longer be solely about technological capability. It will be about defining the kind of society we wish to become.

AI needs a steady human hand to guide it — one grounded in wisdom, ethics, humility, care for our common home, and an enduring ethic of care.

Because in the end, the true measure of artificial intelligence will not be whether machines become more powerful. It will be whether humanity remains fully human.