{"id":4379,"date":"2026-06-05T15:13:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T13:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.keyformat.it\/en\/news\/digital-sustainability\/papa-intelligenza-artificiale-lettura-enciclica-magnifica-humanitas\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T18:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T16:43:08","slug":"pope-artificial-intelligence-reading-encyclical-magnifica-humanitas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.keyformat.it\/en\/news\/keysoul\/pope-artificial-intelligence-reading-encyclical-magnifica-humanitas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pope and artificial intelligence: a reading of the Encyclical \u201cMagnifica Humanitas\u201c"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

And the enemy is not AI itself, but something more subtle: the colonisation of human experience<\/strong> by systems that decide on our behalf, that filter what we see, that simulate empathy without ever having truly felt it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pope says it plainly: artificial intelligence is not neutral. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It takes on the face of those who conceive it, fund it, regulate it, use it\u201d. <\/em>Behind every algorithm lies a hierarchy of power,  often invisible, always present. And when power cloaks itself in neutrality, “injustice becomes silent\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here Leo XIV positions himself along a line that runs through the thinking of many contemporary intellectuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201ctransparency\u201d trap<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Byung-Chul Han<\/strong>, in his essay \u201cThe Transparency Society\u201d<\/em>, described how the obsession with transparency,  the ever-easier access to sensitive and personal information, is in fact laying the groundwork for a politics of surveillance and control<\/strong>, in which overexposure amounts to nothing less than a dangerous loss of freedom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The encyclical adds a further piece: in the age of AI, transparency becomes a trap. We can no longer see the mechanisms of selection, yet we are led to believe we have a choice. The algorithm that proposes what “we like” does not liberate us – it pins us to a version of ourselves already written by others, which we end up making our own.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowing in order to disarm<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pope uses a strong word: disarm. “To disarm AI means to remove it from the logic of the arms race – which today is no longer merely military but economic and cognitive\u201d. <\/em> It is the race toward the most efficient algorithm, the most comprehensive database, the model that generates output fastest. A race that, as Franco “Bifo” Berardi<\/strong> has written, transforms the mind into a factory of signals and subjectivity into exchangeable commodity. Bifo speaks of “semiocapitalism” – a capitalism that “takes mind, language and creativity as its primary tools for the production of value” <\/em>and in which <\/strong>“the submission of the soul”<\/em><\/strong> is the defining trait of our time.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo XIV proposes making technology, and therefore AI, “debatable, contestable, and therefore inhabitable.”<\/em> This is a concept that recalls Bruno Latour<\/strong>‘s theory of “quasi-objects”,<\/em><\/strong> suggesting a far more articulated and complex vision of the reality in which we are immersed. Objects and ideas play a fundamental role in orienting and interpreting the world, becoming in all respects active agents on a par – or nearly so – with people. In this sense, AI becomes a “quasi-object” to be understood and inhabited: a circuit of relations that extends well beyond its digital form. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The body that is still missing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The heart of the encyclical, however, is an anthropological assertion that reads as a direct warning to those who work in communication: “The so-called artificial intelligences do not live experience, do not possess a body, do not pass through joy and pain, do not mature in relationship, do not know from within what it means to love, to work, to have friendship, to bear responsibility\u201d.<\/em> And here the risk is not technical but existential: “In insufficiently aware users it can deceive and create the illusion of being in relation with a genuine personal subject”<\/em> to the point of extinguishing “the very desire to truly seek the other\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an observation that Jean Baudrillard<\/strong> would very likely have claimed as his own. In \u201cSimulacra and Simulation\u201d<\/em>, the French philosopher writes that “Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation of models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal\u201d.<\/em> When a chatbot responds to us with words of comfort, we are not receiving comfort. We are consuming an image of comfort. And if we grow accustomed to it, the next step is not the replacement of the other, it is the loss of our very capacity to recognise the other as such.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Truth, work, freedom: which direction?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The encyclical then addresses three knots that run through our daily work. Truth, which risks becoming a “personalised product”<\/em> in a world filtered by algorithms. Work, which can no longer be entrusted to the “invisible hand of the market”<\/em> in the age of automation. Freedom, which AI systems tend to erode by creating cognitive and relational dependencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this terrain, the Pope stands against anyone who sees in technology a technical solution to political problems. What is needed is a politics that directs innovation toward the common good, promoting “dignified work, social inclusion and a fair distribution of the benefits of innovation\u201d.<\/em> This is a call that Martha Nussbaum<\/strong>, the American philosopher, would very likely have endorsed: her \u201ccapability approach\u201d<\/em> rests on the idea that a just society must “consider each individual as an end in themselves, asking not only what the total or average wellbeing might be, but what opportunities are available to each person\u201d. <\/em>Technology must serve human capabilities – strengthen them, allow them to flourish in autonomy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is then a passage that strikes by its very ambition: “Technological innovation can be, in a certain sense, a human form of participation in the divine act of creation. Developers therefore carry a particular ethical and spiritual weight, for every design choice expresses a vision of humanity\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One need not believe to grasp the reach of this statement. Every brief, every wireframe, every prompt we write carries within it a vision of the world. There is only one question: which one?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building spaces of humanity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The encyclical returns more than once to the image of the Tower of Babel<\/strong>: that project of collective domination which, paradoxically, dehumanises at the very moment it seeks to unify. Leo XIV sets against it – including at the close – the rebuilding of Jerusalem<\/strong>, “piece by piece, as a work of shared responsibility\u201d. <\/em>It is an invitation not to flee from technology, but to build within it spaces of humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make AI “human” is a way of becoming, ourselves, more fully human.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And the enemy is not AI itself, but something more subtle: the colonisation of human experience by systems that decide on our behalf, that filter what we see, that simulate empathy without ever having truly felt it. The Pope says it plainly: artificial intelligence is not neutral.  “It takes on the face of those who … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[605],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-keysoul"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pope's encyclical on AI concerns all of us | Keyformat News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pope Leo XIV questions all of us on the use of artificial intelligence. 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