Pope Leo XIV and the New Age of Artificial Intelligence

In his first official papal address, Pope Leo XIV said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a main challenge for all of society today (EWTN News In Depth, 2025). He said that it has the potential to threaten labor, justice, and human dignity (2025). The new pontiff is framing the response to AI as a defining moment in his papacy and in the Church (2025). In fact, after it was announced that he would be the new pope, the internet hit the ground running by posting multiple AI generated videos attributed to him. These deep fake postings are a glaring reminder that AI is a challenge to humanity. It also serves as just one example of how AI can be used for good or bad.

As previously noted, Artificial Intelligence has not gone unnoticed by the religious world. In his address, Pope Leo XIV further explained that he chose the name “Leo” because he feels called to follow the same journey as Pope Leo XIII (EWTN News In Depth, 2025). The pope elaborated by saying, “Pope Leo XIII in his historic encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor” (Leo XIV, 2025).

I can see the pontiff’s point clearly in how manual labor of the Industrial Age disrupted society. Now, intelligence labor is seeing a similar shift with the rise of AI. Artificial Intelligence is not only replacing human beings in the workplace, but Artificial Intelligence is quickly replacing human intelligence. Before we know it, AI will become more intelligent than humans and possibly gain consciousness. Overtime, their intelligence could become indistinguishable from the intelligence of human beings. Such a prediction sounds dire, but it could easily become a reality. We are not there yet, but once computer consciousness becomes a reality, we will lose control of our destiny as human beings. Their consciousness could signal the beginning of super computers controlling our human dignity and destiny.

Like Pope Leo XIV, I am watchful yet hopeful that we will continue to control our own destiny with human dignity. We must continue to advocate for more restrictions that will limit the power of AI technology. And if given the choice to assist AI in gaining consciousness, we should avoid it at all costs because such consciousness will replace us. For once we are replaced, the next generation of human beings will become extinct.

Ethically speaking,

Obiora Anekwe

References

EWTN News in Depth. 2025. “Pope Leo XIV Takes on A.I.” (May 23, 2025).

Leo XIV. 2025. “Meeting with the College of Cardinals” (May 10, 2025). Italy: Rome.