3 big takeaways from Pope Leo's letter on AI

• Pope Leo XIV issued a letter on AI and its impact on jobs, the environment, and democracy.
• The pope warned that AI job losses could become a "social calamity."
• He also had a special message for AI developers.

In a lengthy address about AI published on Monday, Pope Leo XIV sounded the alarm on everything from mass job losses to Big Tech's grip on AI.

The pope's first encyclical, a major letter to the Church that lays out a pope's thinking on a moral or social challenge, is a 245-paragraph text titled "Magnifica humanitas: on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence."

AI leaders lobbied the Vatican ahead of the letter's release, and Anthropic cofounder Chris Olah spoke at the Vatican City after the pope unveiled it.

The pope also thanked Olah and vowed to work together with him.

"I accept your invitation to work together, to listen and to speak, and together, to find a way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence," the pope said.

In his sprawling opus, Pope Leo warned about autonomous weapons, the environmental impact of AI, and the risk AI poses to human connection. At the same time, he made it clear he does not see artificial intelligence as "inherently evil."

While many of the concerns the pope raised in Monday's letter echo points he has made before, as well as those raised by AI skeptics, the encyclical letter marks a major papal intervention in the ever-contentious AI debate.

Here are the main takeaways.

1. AI shouldn't be monopolized by Big Tech

Throughout the letter, Pope Leo warned repeatedly about AI power becoming concentrated in "the hands of a few."

The industry is dominated by major Big Tech players, including Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

The pope did not explicitly name any companies, but he warned about "major economic and technological actors" increasingly controlling platforms, infrastructure, data, and computing power.

"When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few," he wrote, "it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities."

Drawing on the Catholic principle of the "universal destination of goods," which traditionally holds that all humans have an inherent right to natural resources such as air and water, the pope suggested that it should now extend to algorithms, digital platforms, and data.

The pope also warned that "small but highly influential groups" could use AI to shape democratic processes and steer economic systems to their own advantage.

In the letter, Pope Leo called for AI to be "disarmed" from the race for more powerful algorithms, larger datasets, and commercial dominance.

To disarm AI, he wrote, "means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life."

2. A message to AI developers

Pope Leo issued a "special appeal" to those developing AI.

He said developers "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility" because every design choice "reflects a vision of humanity."

The pope urged AI developers to develop systems embedded with the values of transparency, responsibility, and a "careful attention to ensuring that what is being cultivated is a genuine good."

Pope Leo also cautioned against presenting AI systems as entirely neutral and objective when they often reflect and reinforce the biases of their creators.

3. We should all be worried about AI-related unemployment

A major theme of the letter was AI-related unemployment, with Pope Leo warning that mass unemployment could become a "true social calamity."

Fears about AI crushing the job market have been a part of the conversation since generative AI first took off. While some companies have attributed recent job cuts to AI, not everyone agrees that it will be a labor-market catastrophe.

Stephen Parker, co-head of global investment strategy at JPMorgan Private Bank, told Business Insider this month that "companies are realizing that AI has the potential to upskill workers" rather than make them obsolete.

The pope wrote in that letter that while it's "certainly desirable" for AI to make people's jobs safer and easier, "the protection of employment opportunities and the irreplaceable role of the individual must remain the general rule."

He wrote that the "pursuit of greater profits" cannot justify decisions that eliminate jobs.

Mass job losses from AI, the pope warned, risk creating "human and cultural impoverishment."

He argued that governments and companies should prepare for AI disruption before more jobs disappear.

"Every introduction of automation and AI should be accompanied by verifiable measures to protect the employment, retraining, and participation of workers," he wrote.

The pope wrote that this would help ensure that AI focuses on "freeing up human time and capabilities, rather than producing exclusion."