Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas has been generally understood as a tech-critical document, but in fact, the text bespeaks an acquiescence to technological development as the natural course of human events. Indeed, the encyclical is remarkably “calm and moderate” in tone, as Andrew Sullivan has pointed out, and therefore stands in contrast to the polling and public debate in the pope’s native land, where the fervent enthusiasm for this new technology on the part of its promoters has been met with hostility and alarm about it from the majority.
In this regard, Magnifica Humanitas does not meet the moment. Indeed, it exhibits several of the most unsatisfying features of the current American debate: inevitabilism, an emphasis on historical continuity, an absence of specificity, and a touch of the very technocratic hubris the pope condemns.
Leo sets out to offer guidance on how to “protect the human person in the age of artificial intelligence.” Must we have such an age declared already? Throughout the encyclical, the assumption is that generative AI is here to stay, that our task is to learn to live with it. But we have only had access to commercially available Large Language Models for less time than a presidential term. Must we submit to this technology? Could this not instead be an age of resistance to AI?