Ololade Adeyanju/
Pope Leo XIV has issued a stark warning that humanity risks building a “new Tower of Babel” through the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.
He said the technology could deepen inequality, concentrate power and reshape civilisation in ways that weaken human dignity.
The warning comes in Magnifica Humanitas, his first major encyclical, formally titled, ‘On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence’.
The Vatican document is one of the most significant interventions yet by a major global institution into the debate over AI.
With more than 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide, the encyclical positions the Church as a moral voice in an accelerating global race driven by governments and technology companies.
Pope Leo opens with a warning that frames AI not just as innovation, but as a test of civilisation.
“Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”
The Tower of Babel image runs through the document as a warning against technological ambition that outpaces moral responsibility.
The Pope does not reject artificial intelligence, but insists it is not morally neutral.
“Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.”
He argues that AI reflects the values of those who build it, warning that systems shaped mainly by profit, power or control could deepen inequality and erode freedom.
The encyclical also raises concern about the concentration of technological power in a small number of corporations and states, warning that opaque systems may weaken public oversight and democratic accountability.
“When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight.”
Pope Leo also warns about AI in warfare, particularly autonomous weapons, saying decisions over life and death should never be handed to machines.
He cautions that this could make conflict easier to wage and more detached from its human cost.
Beyond war and politics, the document addresses surveillance, misinformation and the growing role of algorithms in shaping how people see and understand the world.
At its core, the encyclical is a defence of human uniqueness. The Pope rejects the idea that machines can ever match human moral or spiritual life.
“So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain. They do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean.”
He warns that reducing human beings to data or productivity risks distorting how society values work and dignity.
The document draws a clear parallel with the Industrial Revolution and was signed on the anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the 1891 encyclical that reshaped Catholic teaching on labour and industrial change.
The Vatican says AI is now the defining disruption of this century, comparable in scale to the industrial age.
The encyclical arrives amid intense global competition over artificial intelligence, with governments and technology firms investing heavily in systems that are rapidly moving into economic, military and social life.
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