Pope Leo and human intelligence

Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, Magnifca Humanitas, is a learned, wise, eloquent, and useful document that is only partly about artificial intelligence. Its lessons should be helpful to many modern institutions — including my own, journalism. For those expecting the Pontiff to declare holy war on AI and Silicon Valley, they will be disappointed. Those who wish to claim AI as a new religion will be similarly bereft. Apart from a few timely and almost obligatory references to children and screens, this is not a document influenced by the moral entrepreneurs seeking to inflate and exploit fears of technology. Though it calls for regulation, it does not attempt to prescribe statutes. This is a document intended for generations, to inform our discourse as we manage secular upheaval. I will quote liberally, though I recommend reading it in full. Leo opens with an apt Biblical metaphor, contrasting the Tower of Babel with the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. Babel was a doomed project of…