Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical on May 25, calling for AI to be disarmed in service of the common good. The 40,000-word document, titled Magnifica Humanitas, was signed on May 15 in Rome.
The pope issued the encyclical with Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah at his side. It updates Catholic social teaching for the age of AI, which Leo describes as the res novae of our time. The text critiques AI-powered autonomous weapons and the hoarding of data and algorithms by tech elites, likening their actions to colonial extraction of health and genetic information from vulnerable regions.