Artificial intelligence is usually discussed in the language of competition. Who will win the AI race? Which country will dominate? Which company will build the most powerful model? How much productivity can be unlocked, and how many jobs will be replaced?

These are important questions. But a more important one lies beneath them, one that touches on what it means to be human. In his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV asks whether AI will help human beings flourish more fully, or whether it will gradually diminish the qualities that make us human in the first place.

That is why his intervention matters. It is not simply another religious comment about technology. It may be one of the clearest moral statements about AI from any global leader so far.

The Pope is not anti-AI

The most interesting thing about his position is that it is not a panic reaction. He does not say AI is evil, he does not call for a return to a pre-digital world, and he does not treat technology as the enemy. Instead he makes a sharper point: technology is never "just a tool" once it starts shaping work, education, truth, politics, war, and human relationships.

That is exactly where AI now sits. It is no longer only a chatbot, a productivity feature, or a fun image generator. It is becoming part of hiring decisions, education, healthcare, media, creative work, customer service, warfare, and personal identity. It is becoming infrastructure, and infrastructure is never neutral.

The warning is that if AI is designed mainly around efficiency, profit, control, and competition, then those values slowly become the hidden rules of society. The real risk is not that machines suddenly become evil. It is that humans build systems that make us act as if people are data points, workers are cost centers, attention is a resource to be mined, and truth is just content that performs well.

A modern Tower of Babel

In a recent episode of The Rest Is Politics, the hosts frame the Pope's warning through the image of a new Tower of Babel - the same image the encyclical itself reaches for. That image is powerful because Babel is not a story about technology being bad. It is a story about human pride: building something huge, impressive, and technically brilliant while forgetting humility, limits, and human responsibility.

That is a useful way to think about AI. The industry often speaks like Babel - bigger models, more data, more compute, more automation, more scale, more power. But "more" is not the same as "better." A society can become more automated and less humane, more efficient and less fair, more connected and more lonely. It can produce more information and less wisdom.

This is the central insight: the real question is not whether AI can do more. The question is what kind of people we become when we let it.

The Rest Is Politics: "Is AI The New Tower of Babel? The Pope Thinks So." Watch the opening segment on the Pope, AI, and the Babel analogy - before the conversation turns to UK politics.

AI and religion: a question few people are asking

The encyclical also raises a question that gets surprisingly little attention: what does AI mean for religion itself? For centuries, religions have helped societies answer questions that science and technology cannot answer on their own:

AI does not eliminate these questions. If anything, it makes them more urgent. As AI becomes more capable, people may increasingly turn to machines for advice, companionship, guidance, and even emotional support. Some already ask AI the questions they once asked teachers, mentors, therapists, or spiritual leaders. That creates a strange possibility: AI may become more influential in shaping people's beliefs than many traditional institutions.

This is why religion may have a role to play in the AI era - not because it can provide technical solutions, but because it can remind us of values that technology alone cannot generate.

Technology can tell us what is possible. It cannot tell us what is good.

Is the Pope offering a role for religion?

In many ways, yes. The encyclical can be read not only as a warning about AI but as an invitation for religious traditions to re-enter public conversations about the future. For decades, discussions about technology have been dominated by engineers, entrepreneurs, economists, and policymakers. The Pope is suggesting that another voice belongs at the table: the moral and spiritual traditions that have spent centuries thinking about human dignity, responsibility, community, and the limits of power.

Whether one is religious or not, these questions matter. The argument is effectively that humanity needs more than technical intelligence. It also needs moral intelligence - and that is precisely the space where religion has historically operated.

Can religion save our humanity?

That may sound overly dramatic, but it is becoming increasingly relevant. The deeper challenge of AI is not that machines become more intelligent. It is that humans may become less reflective, less patient, less connected, and less capable of exercising judgment. If AI handles more of our thinking, writing, deciding, and communicating, what happens to the habits that make us human?

Religion cannot solve every problem created by AI. But religious traditions often preserve practices that AI cannot automate: reflection, contemplation, community, ritual, moral responsibility, and humility. These remind people that human worth is not measured by productivity, efficiency, or optimization. That message may matter more and more in a world where almost everything is being optimized. Even for non-believers there is something valuable here. The argument is ultimately less about religion than about protecting the conditions that let human beings remain fully human.

Is he the only world leader who gets it?

Strictly speaking, no. The European Union has the AI Act. The United Nations has adopted AI resolutions. The G7 has worked on AI codes of conduct. Governments around the world are trying to create rules on safety, transparency, privacy, and accountability. So the Pope is not the only leader who understands that AI needs governance. But he may be one of the few who understands the human problem underneath the governance problem.

Most political leaders discuss AI through one of three lenses: economic growth, national security, or regulation. These are all necessary, but incomplete. The Pope's lens is different: human dignity. That sounds abstract, but it is very practical. It means asking:

These are not only technical questions. They are moral and political ones, and this is where the Pope's voice feels unusually clear.

The strongest part of the argument

The best part of Magnifica Humanitas is not that it criticizes AI. Many people criticize AI. The strongest part is that it refuses both cheap optimism and cheap doom. Cheap optimism says AI will solve everything, so trust the builders and do not slow down. Cheap doom says AI will destroy everything and the future is already lost. The Pope rejects both.

His position is more demanding: AI can serve humanity, but only if humanity remains the measure of progress. AI should be judged by whether it protects people, strengthens relationships, supports work, respects truth, and serves the common good. That is a higher bar than "does it work?" or "does it scale?" A system can work and still be unjust. It can scale and still be dehumanizing. It can be impressive and still be bad for society.

Why this matters for the AI industry

For builders, founders, product leaders, educators, and marketers, the message is uncomfortable in a useful way. It suggests that "responsible AI" cannot only be a policy page, a safety checklist, or a brand message. It has to shape product choices:

You do not need to be Catholic to see the problem. If AI becomes the operating system of society, then the values inside AI systems will matter to everyone.

AI learning is part of the answer

For a site like this one, that point lands close to home. AI education should not only teach people which tools to use. It should help people understand what AI is doing to work, creativity, truth, and decision-making. The next generation of AI learning should not be only about prompts, automations, agents, and productivity hacks. It should also teach judgment.

People need to learn how to use AI without becoming passive - when to trust it, when to challenge it, when to avoid it, and when a human relationship matters more than a machine-generated answer. That is why AI learning is not a side topic. If only a small technical elite understands AI, then AI increases dependency. If many people understand it, AI can become more democratic.

The real message: disarm AI

One of the most striking ideas in the text is that AI must be "disarmed." This does not mean banning it. It means removing AI from the mindset of domination. AI should not be built mainly as a weapon in a race between companies, countries, or ideologies. It should not be used to manipulate people, replace human responsibility, or concentrate power in the hands of a few. To "disarm" AI is to ask what kind of power we are creating, who controls it, and who pays the price. That may be the most important AI question of all.

Final view: not the only one, but maybe the clearest

So, is the Pope the only world leader who really gets AI? No. But he may be one of the few asking the question in the right order. Most leaders start with power and try to add ethics later. The Pope starts with the human person, and that difference matters.

AI will not be judged only by how intelligent it becomes. It will be judged by what it does to human beings - to workers, children, families, truth, democracy, creativity, and the vulnerable. The message is not that AI is bad. It is that humanity must not become small in the shadow of its own invention. And perhaps that is where religion enters the conversation: not as a competitor to technology, but as a reminder of what technology is ultimately supposed to serve. That is not a religious niche argument. It is one of the central questions of our time.

Want to understand AI without losing your own judgment? Explore our guides to the best AI courses, the best Coursera AI courses, and a plain-English starting point for beginners.