Pope's AI Encyclical Challenges Market Logic in Rome

Pope Leo XIV has issued his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, rejecting the premise that markets and profits should govern the development of artificial intelligence. According to Project Syndicate's commentary on the papal letter, the Chicago-born pontiff explicitly invokes the biblical Tower of Babel—the story of humanity's linguistic fragmentation as divine punishment for hubris—to frame AI as a technology that demands moral scrutiny beyond economic calculation. The encyclical poses a direct challenge to what commentators describe as Chicago School economics, the free-market doctrine that has long shaped technology policy in the United States and, increasingly, in Europe.

The timing and scope of the encyclical signal a shift in how the Vatican frames its engagement with technology. Rather than blessing innovation or warning against it wholesale, Leo XIV positions the Church as a voice insisting that AI raises questions 'that prices and profits cannot answer,' according to Project Syndicate. The letter arrives as European policymakers grapple with AI regulation, competition with Chinese and American tech giants, and the social consequences of algorithmic systems already embedded in labour markets, healthcare, and public administration.

Commentators in the international press have noted both the encyclical's clarity and its limitations. Project Syndicate's Peter Singer, writing from Melbourne, credits Leo with 'great credit for making AI the topic of his first encyclical' and acknowledges that 'the world is dangerously unprepared for the social and economic transformation that AI is bringing.' Yet Singer argues the papal vision, while clear-eyed about techno-utopianism's limits, remains too narrowly focused on human flourishing and does not extend adequately to the interests of 'every sentient being, human and nonhuman, biological or—possibly—artificial.'