The Pope’s Encyclical and Cyberhumanism
For ten years I’ve been repeating the same things, in companies and in schools and in books: technology is not neutral, Artificial Intelligence seems to understand but it doesn’t, whoever has the data has the power.
In Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI, Magnifica Humanitas, I found almost word for word the things I’ve always said. There’s blind enthusiasm, where more powerful doesn’t mean better. And there’s confidence without comprehension, where these systems imitate humans, sometimes beat us on speed, but don’t understand what they produce. They simulate empathy, they simulate understanding. They speak well, they’re tidy, they seem neutral, but they’re not. And meanwhile they get us used to delegating, to taking the ready-made answer and to using our heads less. The Pope seems to have read my book Cyberumanesimo. I did send it to him…
He also writes about the fake relationship that AI creates. For a while now I’ve been saying that machines today comfort you without existing. And he makes it clear that when speech is simulated it doesn’t build a relationship, but only an appearance of one, and the worst risk is losing the desire to truly look for real people.
Then the big theme of whoever has the data has control. I’ve opened my lectures this way for years, and the encyclical calls the health and demographic data of entire peoples the new rare earths of power. Whoever owns them shapes needs, anticipates markets and decides who gets care and investment before everyone else.
The concentration of power is something I’ve been calling out forever. The encyclical says AI mainly grows those who already have money, skills and data, and that a few very influential groups steer information, consumption and even democracy. Companies stronger than governments. Today certain decisions are made by a few, the ones who control the data.
Finally it talks about AI and war, a theme anyone who follows me knows is close to me. A machine must not decide over a person’s life. The Pope writes that with technology conflict only becomes faster and more impersonal, and the threshold for violence drops. Disarm AI, he says!
In the end the thread is one: stay human. Keep the person at the center and technology at their service. The most institutional voice on the planet, today, is saying what I’ve been repeating for ten years. You don’t need to believe in anything to notice it. And maybe, coming from there, someone is starting to listen.
What do you think?
#ArtificialDecisions #MCC
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