‘Magnifica Humanitas’ a call for moral wisdom in the age of AI, panelists say

(OSV News) — Just as it did in the industrial age, the Catholic Church is called to discern the rapidly evolving advances of digital technology in the light of the Gospel, said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state.

Addressing participants, including Pope Leo XIV, at a May 25 presentation held at the Synod Hall at the Vatican, Cardinal Parolin said the pope’s new encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” (“Magnificent Humanity”), placed “itself in the living tradition of the social doctrine of the Church,” much like Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum” did 135 years ago.

The speed at which the power of artificial intelligence “accumulates risks exceeding the capacity of individual conscience, and even of institutions, to guide it,” the cardinal said.

“This asymmetry between technical power and moral wisdom is perhaps the most profound challenge that ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ hands over to us,” he added.

The presentation coincided with the Vatican’s release of Pope Leo’s first encyclical on safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence. In it, the pope emphasized the need to place human dignity at the forefront as the world becomes more reliant on AI.

The speakers addressing the event included Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

Also joining the panel were: Christopher Olah, co-founder of the AI company Anthropic; British theologian Anna Rowlands, professor of Catholic social thought and practice at Durham University, England; and Léocadie Lushombo, a professor of theological ethics at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University.

In his address, Cardinal Parolin said that in the face of advances in digital technology, the Catholic Church is called to discern and offer “in the light of the Gospel, a contribution to the good of the entire human family.”

While it “was not always possible for the Church to enter directly into dialogue with the main political, economic, and industrial subjects who guided social transformation” during the industrial revolution, he said dialogue between the Catholic Church and institutions, governments, universities and business, is today “already underway.” He said that “that listening to interlocutors makes the work of evangelization, the service to common discernment, and the contribution to the responsibility of protecting human dignity more effective and incisive.”

Cardinal Parolin added that technology could not be measured solely by its efficiency or speedy results, but rather “it demands to be brought back to the truth of the person.” He also expressed his hope that the encyclical can be an “occasion for discernment and shared responsibility.”

Offering a theological framework for the pope’s first encyclical, Cardinal Fernández noted the prevalence of posthumanistic and transhumanistic thought, which espouses technological attempts to replace humanity or permanently eliminate human limits.

Neither of those thoughts, he said, will fill “the infinite space of our hearts, nor will it give a stable and lasting meaning to our human lives.”

Cardinal Fernández also noted that behind the idea of progress “lies a false mysticism” that is the opposite “of what Christians and other believers call new life.”

That new life, he added, “takes us beyond ourselves into genuine transcendence. It is life lived in faith, hope and charity.”

He also warned of a “hyper-technological worldview,” where faith is replaced by trust in technological capabilities, where genuine hope is turned into a “superficial hope for a new product that will relieve our boredom,” and love into an “attachment to things we desire to have more.”

“This runs the risk of ignoring that the human person has a spiritual dimension, created directly by God, which cannot be reduced to the mechanisms of a technological system, nor can it be reproduced by them,” Cardinal Fernández said.

Rowlands said the encyclical served as a warning to humanity of “a growing culture of power that is reshaping work, family, education and political life.”

She noted that throughout the Church’s history, especially over the past 135 years, encyclicals have exposed “the false idols present in the ideologies of each era,” teaching that “we will not be saved by the market, nor historical forces, nor by the nation-state.”

“Today, Pope Leo cautions that we will not be ‘saved’ by AI or by its post- or transhumanisms,” she said. “Such ideologies present total autonomy, radical automation, the ambitions of machine consciousness and the overcoming of human limits as ‘saving’ goals.”

Echoing Cardinal Fernández’s observations, Rowlands noted that “Magnifica Humanitas” reaffirms that human limitations are an integral part of the human experience that are “part of how we learn compassion, generosity, and health interdependence.”

However, she also noted that the encyclical also tells “a positive story about technologies,” which, when at the service of the common good, “can be viewed as an extension of the freedom God gives us in Genesis, to till and keep the land.”

“Pope Leo prompts us to ask: In the interests of the common good, how can we resist such distorting concentrations of power in the hands of the few? How can we re-engage technologies as a matter of the common good, accountable to the good of every human and all humanity?” she asked.

For Lushombo, “Magnifica Humanitas” offers critical warnings about the effects of AI on humanity, especially in the Global South.

Noting that overreliance on machines to discover truth diminishes one’s capacity for creativity and intellectual judgement, Lushombo called for the preservation of inner freedom, especially from digital platforms that can often diminish human experiences, bonds, and emotions.

She also noted the encyclicals’ concerns regarding the physical and environmental toll of AI infrastructure, especially in the developing world, where child labor is often used in the extraction of rare earth elements.

Lushombo highlighted Pope Leo’s denouncement of “a technological development
that represses human dignity and widens the gap between the rich and the poor, as AI is
doing, following the patterns of economic globalization.”

“Technology should serve human flourishing and human dignity, not as a form
of control over consciences,” she said.

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