At UNESCO, pope laments paradox of celebrating AI while human dignity ‘discarded’

(OSV News) — Pope Leo XIV warned diplomats, academics and youth delegates that human dignity is being cast to the wayside in the name of efficiency and productivity in the era of AI.

Addressing representatives of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, on the first day of his visit to France Sept. 25, the pope noted that “artificial systems have even been given the name of our human faculty of thought: intelligence” while human ideas and relations “risk being impoverished by a process of dehumanization.”

“The paradox has become increasingly evident: while ‘intelligence’ is attributed to computational systems, we struggle to recognize the inalienable dignity of human persons, whose lives are judged according to the criterion of efficiency and, when deemed no longer productive, are rejected and discarded,” he said.

After lunch at the apostolic nunciature in Paris, Pope Leo made his way to UNESCO’s headquarters, established in 1945 to promote peace through international cooperation in science, culture, education and communication.

— First papal visit to UNESCO since 1980 —

The organization comprises 194 member states and 12 associate members. Although the Vatican is not a voting member, it has held permanent observer status since 1952 and will commemorate the 75th anniversary of its Permanent Observer Mission at UNESCO in 2027.

Upon his arrival, the pope was welcomed by UNESCO’s director-general Khaled El-Enany and Msgr. Roberto Campisi, the Vatican’s permanent observer, and signed the guestbook.

“Grateful for the welcome I have received,” the pope wrote, “it is my hope that, with God’s help, UNESCO will continue its valuable promotion of international cooperation in the fields of education, science and culture.”

The pope was greeted by several UNESCO representatives and had a brief private meeting with El-Enany before being escorted to the headquarters’ Square of Tolerance.

The square, which features an olive tree in its center symbolizing peace, was built as a homage to Yitzhak Rabin, the former Israeli prime minister who was assassinated in Tel Aviv in 1995 by a right-wing extremist who opposed his peace initiatives towards Palestinians.

The pope and El-Enany were handed green watering cans and watered the olive tree before heading to the main hall, where the pontiff was greeted with cheers and a standing ovation.

El-Enany welcomed Pope Leo and called his visit “a truly historic moment” as it was the first visit by a pontiff in 46 years; St. John Paul II visited the UNESCO headquarters in 1980.

— Shared commitment of ‘building a just world’ —

Pope Leo began his speech, delivered in French and English, by thanking El-Enany for inviting him to address the gathering, which also included educators, cultural leaders, and youth representatives who also participated in a forum earlier in the day.

The morning session, titled “UNESCO Forum for Youth in the Digital Age,” reflected on “Magnifica Humanitas” (“Magnificent Humanity”), the pope’s encyclical on safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence.

Recalling the shared commitment of “building a just world,” the pope encouraged the organization to be “a place where humanity can reflect on itself, on its history and on its future.”

Pope Leo said education would be incomplete “if it fails to address the question of life’s meaning,” and, citing St. John Paul’s 1980 address, reminded the assembly that to
“educate means to help people to ‘be’ more and not merely to ‘have’ more.”

“In this assembly, then, a fundamental question deserves to be explored, one that urgently calls for a response: What does it mean to be human? Every culture is challenged by this question, which lies at the heart of every form of knowledge, every art and every religion,” he said.

— Pope Leo defines humanity through three realities —

Defining humanity through three realities, the pope noted that humans are first called to be children and that for every human being, “birth establishes a primordial bond — a communion of life that has its source, and its first educational setting, in the family.”

Secondly, he continued, humans are “all born naked and in need,” a fact that “as we become adults, we risk forgetting it.”

“It is precisely those in need who suffer the gravest consequences of this forgetfulness, whenever their humanity is betrayed or cast aside, exploited or deceived. Forgetting the circumstances of our birth obscures the very idea of human life, because it detaches life from the history common to us all,” the pope said.

He also warned that forgetting that vulnerability can lead to life not being “understood as a gift, but as a commodity.”

Lastly, Pope Leo underlined the need “to keep alive the memory of our common humanity” as well as its potential, which is often “diminished by many forms of evil and injustice.”

Those involved in education, science and culture, he added, are called to care for every person “so that the beauty of freedom may shine forth.”

“Freedom is indeed beautiful when it is oriented toward goodness and truth; it is disfigured when it descends into arbitrariness, violence or the thirst for power,” the pope said.

Humanity can either “cultivate the earth or destroy it, create works of art or destroy them,” he said, adding that war is “the most terrible of human works” that ultimately places science “at the service of an inhumane will to destroy and kill.”

Pope Leo continued his speech by recalling the founding of UNESCO in the wake of World War II, warning that “scientific progress, when severed from wisdom, can turn into a weapon of destruction,” while a culture subjected to ideology can degenerate to false propaganda, and education stripped of truth can be used to manipulate consciences.

— Pope Leo: technology must ‘remain at the service of the human person’ —

However, he said, among today’s challenges came new technologies, which the pope said must “remain at the service of the human person, rather than becoming yet another instrument of domination and injustice.”

Drawing from the Bible, the pope contrasted two visions for society, the first being the Tower of Babel, which he said represented “a unity imposed through domination.”

“The presumption of making oneself like God and subjecting peoples to a single yoke leads to a confusion of languages and a failure to understand one another,” he noted.

The “temptation” of Babel, he continued, is reflected in today’s world where “globalization pursued without fraternity” and the prevalence of ideological impositions are those that “reduce human life to commerce.”

Pope Leo noted that despite humans’ ability to connect with each other over long distances, the world is witnessing “new forms of isolation, material and spiritual poverty, and abandonment.”

“Communication has become much faster, but not necessarily more truthful,” he said. “Information is abundant, but it is not synonymous with wisdom.”

Lamenting the increase of false information and “giving currency to words devoid of meaning,” Pope Leo noted that AI “amplifies this problem.”

— Care must be shown to ‘the littlest and the poor’ —

“Although such systems can correlate data, they cannot answer questions that concern the meaning of human life, which is rooted in lived experience,” the pope explained. “Yet human beings cannot live without meaning. Meaning is the oxygen of the mind.”

He also warned that without truth, “language becomes subject to violence and to the arbitrary will of the powerful,” and “every science risks losing its proper meaning when pursued without ethics, and thus ceasing to serve and reflect human dignity.”

After reiterating his predecessors’ call for an “integral ecology” that cares for both humans and creation, the pope emphasized that care must be shown to “the littlest and the poor,” including the unborn, children living in war zones, the disabled, the elderly, migrants and refugees, and “all those arrogantly excluded as unproductive.”

“They are the true test of our claims to respect human dignity, and their protection and promotion extend also to creation,” he said. “Opposed to this is a will to exploit and plunder, extracting as much as possible from every living being, consuming without safeguarding and destroying without cultivating.”

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