GoKawiilis The Verge’s senior AI reporter. An AI beat reporter for more than five years, her work has also appeared in CNBC, MIT Technology Review, Wired UK, and other outlets.
On Monday, Pope Leo XIV unveiled an encyclical letter addressing the societal implications of artificial intelligence. The letter, titled Magnifica Humanitas, warned that the “use of AI is never a purely technical matter: when it enters processes that affect people’s lives, it touches on rights, opportunities, status and freedom.” Alongside him was Anthropic cofounder and interpretability team lead Christopher Olah, representing a partnership between the Catholic Church and one of the biggest players in AI.
The letter elicited a wide range of reactions from in and around the tech industry. Nearly everyone believed the document would be influential. Some critics questioned whether it went far enough, and others believed it should have discussed artificial general intelligence (AGI), which many companies insist is imminent. Still others thought the pope was spot-on.
“It was a pretty clear subtweet of big tech CEOs who are out here blatantly declaring that they’re eliminating staff to replace ‘lower-value human capital’ with AI, and who are also buying their way into the political rooms where it happens in order to write the rules in their favor,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project.
The pope’s encyclical comes amid a backlash to AI’s growing power. Six in 10 US adults feel they have “little to no control” of how AI is used in their everyday lives, protests against the construction of data centers are increasingly common, and some people have even attempted attacks on AI CEOs themselves.
As Olah’s appearance suggests, the pope’s missive describes AI as a technology that can have positive applications, and its tone earned mixed reactions. “I’m glad it’s critical of the AI companies though I think it should be more so,” Daniel Kokotajlo, an AI researcher and former OpenAI employee who is behind the nonprofit AI Futures Project, told The Verge. Conversely, Dr. Guru Sethupathy, GM of AI governance at software company Optro, was encouraged by indications that “Pope Leo and the Vatican are not against AI but rather how to pursue a responsible path that is best for humanity.”
The decision to partner with the Vatican was a strategic move by Anthropic, a company that’s built its business on a carefully curated reputation of being a more trustworthy alternative than its competitors. Anthropic famously spent the last few months embroiled in a battle with the Pentagon over limits to military AI use, and a connection with another powerful institution could help bolster its status — and let it help shape future Vatican recommendations.
One controversial aspect of the document, in many tech circles, was that it made no mention whatsoever of AGI or superintelligence; it allows that AI systems may “often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity” but says they “lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom.” Dean W. Ball, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, wrote on X that the encyclical “would be much improved if it were less enamored of the traditional academia/civil society talking points on AI … and more engaged with where AI is headed. But instead of doing that, the encyclical dodges in the deepest sense, denying that AI ‘really thinks’ or ‘really learns.’” Kokotajlo also said he wished the letter took the possibility of AGI and superintelligence “more seriously.”
But the document isn’t meant to do everything, several people in tech and in the Catholic world told The Verge.
“It’s not about AI. It’s about protecting the human person in the age of AI.”
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