Pope Leo XIV issues AI encyclical calling for robust regulation, declares lethal AI decisions 'not permissible'

Pope Leo XIV dropped his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, calling for robust legal frameworks to govern AI, denouncing the concentration of power among a handful of tech billionaires, and declaring it "not permissible" to hand irreversible lethal decisions to AI systems. The math-major pope framed AI as the same kind of civilizational challenge the Industrial Revolution posed 135 years ago — and signed the document on the anniversary of Rerum Novarum, his predecessor Leo XIII's landmark workers'-rights text.

In a twist only 2026 could provide, the Vatican invited Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah to speak at the launch — an AI company currently suing the Trump administration for trying to give the U.S. military unrestricted access to its technology. Olah welcomed the pope's criticism, calling for "informed critics who will tell the labs when we are failing." The document is expected to become a benchmark in AI ethics debates worldwide, which is either encouraging or a sign of how few other institutions are filling that vacuum.