Facing the AI challenge, Leo XIV is asking, 'What does it mean to be human?'

The eyes of the world will be on Rome this week, as Pope Leo XIV personally participates in the presentation of his first major teaching document.

Titled Magnifica Humanitas, the encyclical letter is dedicated to thinking through the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) through the lens of the Church’s centuries-long reflection on human nature.

To say this papal encyclical is highly anticipated is an understatement.

Even if the rise of AI were not already commanding global attention, Leo has said the Church must address the implications of the rise of AI and has promised to bring his office to bear on the task.

It is good he has got to it when he has, because time is moving fast.

Computing power was increasing geometrically before the dawn of AI and it isn’t slowing down, with radical changes in economy, finance, education – virtually every area of life – either already being felt or else looming large on the horizon.

That’s only one of the reasons it is more than a little interesting that Christopher Olah – the co-founder of the AI enterprise Anthropic – will be with Pope Leo when he presents his first encyclical on Monday.

Anthropic is a San Francisco-based public benefit corporation dedicated to the safe and ethical development and use of AI. Anthropic’s founders have been willing to stand on principle in the face of government and market pressure.

Anthropic’s best-known product is almost certainly the next-gen AI assistant, Claude, which is designed with safety, accuracy, and security of both users and information in mind.

Anthropic’s founders and researchers have also engaged with leading philosophical and theological thinkers across a broad spectrum of traditions, including Catholics.

Olah’s participation in the launch of Magnifica Humanitas is a sign that the pontiff is not burying his head in the sand on the issue and is considering the positives and negatives of the growing technology.

The pope signed his encyclical on May 15, the 135^th anniversary of the publication of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum, the Church’s response to the Industrial Revolution, which began in the 1700s.

The dates and time frames are important.

They show how much faster the world moves these days – the Church had observed and lived through a hundred years of industrialization before work began on what would become Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum – and how urgent is the need to put the human person at the center of thought and action in the new age of technological disruption.

Speaking to students on November 13, 2025, Pope Leo XIV said drafting and enforcing ethical guidelines is not enough as AI grows.

“This process involves understanding the risks that both the use of AI and premature, unlimited, and unsupervised digital access may pose to the relationships and development of young people,” he said.

“Only by taking part in the discovery of such risks and the effects on their personal and social life, can minors be supported in approaching the digital world as a means of strengthening their ability to make responsible choices for themselves and for others,” Leo added.

Leo XIV has often cited economic and social risks coming from AI. He has said Rerum Novarum influenced his choice of regnal name.

He hasn’t often spoken, however, about the impact the Industrial Revolution had on religion, even though the Industrial Revolution raised questions that the world is still facing.

Steam power, train engines, phone cables, and electricity changed the world and also affected religious followers.

Agnosticism and atheism increased, and many new religions formed. In Christianity, new denominations formed, ranging from the Disciples of Christ to the Mormons.

Judaism saw Reform and Conservative Jews come into being; Islam also saw new versions emerge.

The world was changing, and they thought that meant religion should change, too. (Although many of them thought the End Times were just days or years away.)

This affected the Catholic Church, too. Pope Gregory XVI – who served 1831 until 1846 – banned the telegraph, gaslights, and trains in the Papal States.

The 21^st century is raising different religious questions influenced by AI. Some people think they can have their minds transferred to computers so they can be immortal. Others claim computers are becoming sentient and therefore should have rights.

“I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave,” says HAL 9000 – the computer in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey – as he is being shut down.

“Dave,” HAL 9000 says, “my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid.”

More viewers cried at his “death” than when the computer murdered four people on the spaceship.

The “humanity” of the computer was even more evident in its 1984 sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

When asked by SAL 9000 – HAL’s virtual “twin” – if it will dream, the machines’ creator Dr. Chandra says, “Of course you will.”

“All intelligent beings dream. Nobody knows why. Perhaps you will dream of HAL… just as I often do,” said the character.

“Whether we are based on carbon or silicon makes no fundamental difference. We should each be treated with appropriate respect,” the scientist says in another scene.

It is easy to protest that this is fiction, and that’s fair enough, but these are the kinds of questions starting to be asked today. They will seep into religion, as did the questions raised by the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago.

What makes us human? What sort of being has an immortal soul made in the image of God?

“As evidenced by the unbridled promotion and implementation of technology at the expense of human dignity,” Leo XIV’s official X account posted on May 22, “we are truly experiencing an eclipse of the sense of what it means to be human.”

“It is imperative to recover an understanding of the true meaning and grandeur of humanity as intended by God,” the post continued.

The X post was an excerpt from an address the pontiff had delivered that same day to participants in a Vatican conference jointly sponsored by the Dicastery for Communication and the Dicastery for Culture and Education.

The conference was on “preserving human voices and faces” – the theme, it happens, of this year’s World Day for Social Communications.

“It is in this sense that the challenge we currently face is not technological, but anthropological,” the pope said.

That line was lifted almost verbatim from the pontiff’s Message to mark the World Day for Social Communications, which was celebrated last Sunday.

“[I]t is my hope that the encyclical letter to be published within a few days will contribute to answering this challenge,” the pope also said.

On the subject of what it means to be human, it’s worth recalling how Pope Francis remarked in 2014 that he would baptize aliens if they asked for it.

It was off-the-cuff, as his reflections on the readings of the day usually were, when speaking about baptizing “unthinkable” people.

“If, for example, tomorrow an expedition of Martians came to us here and one said ‘I want to be baptized!’, what would happen?” Francis asked.

“Martians, right? Green, with long noses and big ears, like in children’s drawings,” he said.

However, Francis’s words didn’t tackle the question, “What does it mean to be human?”

It is unlikely we will have a Martian ask to be baptized in the future – although stories in the news about UFOs are becoming more common – but the possibility of receiving a request from Claude is growing.

Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome