Pope Leo XIV affirms, before meeting with Sánchez, that “technology should not be concentrated in the hands of a few”

Eduardo González Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” on Monday, May 25, on the social doctrine of the Church “in the age of artificial intelligence.” In it, he warns that “technology should not be concentrated in the hands of a few,” describes the elimination or subjugation of a nation as “immoral and unacceptable,” rejects increased military spending as the “only answer” to an “uncertain future,” defends the rights of migrants and the analysis of “the root causes” of migration, and calls for “an examination of conscience” within the Church on behalf of the “victims of abuse”. “The magnificent humanity that God has created is today faced with a decisive choice: to build a new Tower of Babel or to build the city where God and humanity dwell together.” Thus begins the introduction (‘incipit’) of the text, signed by the Pope on May 15, on the occasion of the 135th anniversary of Leo XIII’s “Rerum novarum,” which renews the social doctrine of the Church “in the age of artificial intelligence.” The text was published this Monday, just before the official trip of the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, to Italy, which will include a visit to the Vatican to discuss with Leo XIII, among other matters, the positions of the Pope and Spain regarding artificial intelligence, the global geopolitical situation, and migration issues, according to sources at Moncloa Palace. “In a context where the wealth of nations increasingly depends on knowledge and technology, when these resources are concentrated in the hands of a few, without adequate means of exchange and access, a new imbalance is created that contradicts the universal destination of goods and widens the gap between the included and the excluded, between those who can participate in the digital revolution and those who remain on the margins,” the Pope warns. In Leo XIV’s view, Artificial Intelligence, cognitive science, nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology, “in themselves,” can be “a great help for integral human development and the care of our common home, but precisely because of their power, they can act as an accelerator of the technocratic paradigm and, therefore, need a new spiritual, ethical, and political framework,” since “more powerful does not necessarily mean better.” In this context, he warns, technology is not “an evil in itself” but neither is it “neutral,” because “it takes on the face of those who conceive, finance, regulate, and use it.” “Technical power, if not balanced, does not make us more capable: it isolates us and exposes us even more to logics of domination and exclusion,” he continues. Therefore, he affirms, “economic flows, digital platforms, data management, and algorithms” cannot remain in the hands of a “few actors,” and it is necessary to “remove” Artificial Intelligence “from monopolies” and regulate it through an ethical code subject to criteria of shared social justice, because “a more moral AI is useless if that morality is decided by a few.” “A just social order in the digital age is one that guarantees everyone equal access to opportunities, protects the most vulnerable and the most vulnerable, opposes hatred and disinformation, and subjects the use of data and technologies to public control, so that the criterion is not only profit but also the dignity of each person and the good of all peoples,” he insists. The Pope's words come after the legislative and regulatory measures announced last February by the Spanish Government to protect minors and strengthen control on social networks against disinformation and hate speech, and after Pedro Sánchez's numerous denunciations against "the techno-oligarchs" and against the attacks on democracy by that "failed state" that "social networks" constitute. “The New slavery” For all these reasons, in this context of the “fourth industrial revolution” represented by the digital transition, the Pope considers it necessary to protect the dignity and value of work because “new ways of working are not necessarily better,” since technology can devalue workers, relegate them to marginal roles, and subject them to automated surveillance. To this end, he considers it necessary to design systems centered on the person and not just on performance, because technology can certainly free people from arduous or repetitive tasks, but it must not lead to unemployment in the name of cost reduction and increased profits. The person cannot be “a resource to be used and exploited,” he warns. In this same vein, the Pope warns that Artificial Intelligence generates new forms of slavery, such as the “marked, mutilated, consumed bodies” of those who work in the extraction of “rare earth elements.” Therefore, “the Church renews its firm condemnation of all forms of slavery, trafficking, and commodification of persons” and “sincerely asks forgiveness” for the Church’s past delay in condemning “the scourge of slavery.” Furthermore, the text defends the inviolability of human rights, the foremost of which is the right to life “from conception to natural death,” and rejects “induced abortion, the killing of innocents, and euthanasia as ‘gravely illicit decisions.’” The Pope also defends the recognition of the rights of minorities, with particular attention to women. Nations and migration Furthermore, the Encyclical affirms that “the promotion of the common good can never be separated from respect for the right of peoples to exist, to safeguard their own identity, and to contribute their originality to the family of nations.” “Any attempt or project to eliminate or subjugate a nation is gravely immoral and therefore unacceptable,” it warns. Likewise, the Pope considers that, in the digital age, equitable access to opportunities must be guaranteed for all, the most vulnerable must be protected, hatred and disinformation must be combated, and he affirms that migrants, refugees, and displaced persons represent a “decisive testing ground” in this area, because the way society treats them demonstrates “whether the idea of justice is guided by fear or by fraternity.” Therefore, he calls for the protection of “the right to hope” for those forced to leave, guaranteeing them safe and legal routes, dignified reception, and integration, and for the promotion of every person’s “right” to “remain” in their own land in peace and security, addressing the “root causes” of migration. Furthermore, the Pope calls for “an examination of conscience” within the Church and urges the “purification of ecclesial relationships and structures of those distortions that produce inequalities, opacity, and prevarication,” and for listening to the “victims of spiritual, economic, institutional, sexual, power, and conscience abuses.” Against “just war” The Pope’s encyclical rejects the “culture of power” that normalizes war and rehabilitates it as an “instrument of international politics” and warns against media narratives that generate polarization and against the “worrying loss of historical memory.” According to Leo XIV, peace is no longer understood as a task to be undertaken, but as a precarious interval between conflicts. Therefore, “without prejudice to the right of legitimate self-defense, understood in the strictest sense,” it is important, “more than ever,” to reiterate “the overcoming of the theory of ‘just war,’ invoked too often to justify any war.” Furthermore, the Pope rejects increased military spending as the “only answer” to an “uncertain future,” justified by the argument that “it would be irresponsible not to prepare for confrontation.” “What is truly irresponsible is Realpolitik, this form of political ‘realism,’ which sows resignation in consciences and culture in the face of an unavoidable war, and labels peace and dialogue as utopian or irrational positions that ignore the risks involved,” he states. Likewise, the Pope calls for “dialogue between religions” and warns that “whoever uses the name of God to legitimize terrorism, violence, or war betrays his face: to fight in the name of religion means, in reality, to strike at religion itself.” Furthermore, Leo XIV laments the crisis of multilateralism and the emergence of a “disordered and conflictive multipolarity” in which distrust of the other prevails and in which the force of law is replaced by the law of the strongest, and therefore calls for “profound reforms” in the UN and in the international political system to overcome the current crisis of values in favor of the true common good.

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