Anna Rowlands writes:

Eleven years ago, Laudato Si’ called us to an urgent care for the earth and the poor, warning of a technocratic paradigm that measures human worth by utility. Today, Pope Leo makes clear that to overcome this paradigm and exercise this care for the earth and the poor requires us to urgently safeguard the human. An integral ecology requires an integral humanism centred in Jesus Christ….

Instead, Magnifica Humanitas presents human freedom as a gift anchored in a truth that is personal, embodied, and relational. Our freedom and intelligence express themselves through a knowing and loving that is irreplaceably embodied – through care, work, contemplation, suffering and friendship. The encyclical names free human beings as a loved creation, equal in dignity, created for relationship, rational shapers of the world, and a neighbour to fellow humans, without exception. Power is the capacity to cultivate this world together. Without such guiding truths, our freedom becomes little more than an instrument in the hands of arbitrary powers….

We are invited to see ourselves as more than individuals, cogs of the state, market agents, or user-tools of an algorithmic order. The Church’s social doctrine invites us into a wide communal space of encounter and mutual accompaniment, sharing in a collective search for truth, justice and flourishing. For it to be such a space, the most vulnerable and victims must have faces and names and be heard first….

Today, Pope Leo cautions that we will not be “saved” by AI or by its post- or trans-humanisms. Such ideologies present total autonomy, radical automation, the ambitions of machine consciousness and the overcoming of human limits as “saving” goals. In doing so, they “give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities”, and change the way we think about human limits. Magnifica Humanitas reaffirms that limits are part of how we learn compassion, generosity, and healthy interdependence; part of how the heart is pierced and how it expands towards communion; and part of how the soul grows in a wisdom that is more than mere knowledge….

Since our origins, humans have created technologies that augment their freedom, alleviate suffering and meet real needs. When technologies remain tools serving a clear good, they can be viewed as an extension of the freedom God gives us in Genesis, to till and keep the land. This view places technologies within the terms of the covenant between God and humanity, honouring the human vocation to decent work, to raise families, to seek truth as a common good, to build community, and to foster unity and peace. The tradition’s question is constructive: how do we cultivate technologies that are good news for all, that serve people and truth?…

The encyclical helps us discern when a culture risks misrecognising and disordering virtue and vice, strength and weakness, courage and cowardice. Magnifica Humanitas helps us see that the desire for domination – what Augustine calls the libido dominandi – might be lauded by the world as strength, but is contempt for God and neighbour and never a Christian virtue.

Meghan Clark writes:

For its part, AI seeks speed and efficiency, its goal to remove any and all friction from human life. Grounding itself in the gift of humanity created by God, Magnifica Humanitas, however, invites us to embrace finitude to find flourishing in relationship.

Embracing finitude means acknowledging our limits and that can be difficult.

As I read the encyclical, I could not help but reflect on my own experiences of chronic illness. When I was 16 years old, I experienced a serious head trauma in a car accident. As a result, I suffer from chronic migraines. For years, migraines and dizziness set limitations of pain and fear. Luckily, I had an excellent neurological team who found a treatment plan that lessened the frequency of attacks. Today my condition is well managed, but it will never go away. It is a condition where technology may prove useful in analyzing patterns and identifying triggers. Yet, it will always remain. Chronic illness, even one successfully treated, is a constant reminder of finitude and vulnerability….

Throughout the encyclical, the ability of human persons to grow in wisdom and knowledge, to develop through challenges and struggle, is identified as a definitive difference between humans and generative AI. Struggle, and even suffering, are not automatic enemies to be conquered but considered as liminal spaces of possibility. Compassion and generosity “can emerge even in the midst of darkness and failure.”…

Love involves vulnerability and suffering. One cannot be unaffected when a loved one is in pain. For Christians, Christ reveals love amidst vulnerability, a love that persists. “The ability to care for one another is a fundamental dimension of our humanity, one that is learned through lived experience,” reads the encyclical. I love that the first example of care listed is “reading stories to a child.” There is a beauty in reading to a child and accompanying their learning to read. Not all struggle involves suffering. As we learn and grow, struggle and transform, we live into our infinite human dignity. In doing so, we remember, “what saves humanity is the divine love that descends into the most fragile point of our history and renews it from within.”

Kim Daniels writes:

The unease about AI runs across the political spectrum, from labor organizers worried about automation to those on the right concerned about the erosion of human agency, and from those focused on algorithmic bias to those focused on surveillance. What Pope Leo offers is a framework that transcends divisions, not by papering over real disagreements, but by beginning with something prior to them: the irreducible worth of the human person.

Along with its focus on human dignity, “Magnifica Humanitas” lifts up two other principles that deserve particular attention. First, the dignity of work; what we do shapes who we are, and technology that degrades or devalues human labor isn’t progress; it’s a great loss. AI should be designed to empower and complement workers, not de-skill or surveil them. Second, care for the vulnerable; how our society treats those in need is the true measure of our commitment to the common good. How AI systems are built will either advance human dignity and the common good or leave the most vulnerable further behind, and we are making such choices now.

Elizabeth Bruenig writes:

One of the pope’s most surprising arguments is his insistence that humanity is fundamentally good—not in spite of, but because of the things that make us unlike machines. “Finitude, when truly accepted, does not diminish us but opens us to recognizing the face of God and others,” he writes. “Indeed, precisely because we experience limits—vulnerability, suffering and failure—we can recognize the inviolable dignity of every person, both our own and that of others.” He worries about any willingness to allow the human powers of reason, creativity, compassion, and care for fellow people to be usurped by machines.

This concern arrives at a moment when any faith in human goodness, judgment, and ingenuity seems to be under assault. Some of the loudest voices in Silicon Valley sound conflicted as to whether humans have anything of value to offer at all….

Such pretensions to perfection are partly what make AI dangerous. Pope Leo points out that the creators and users of AI are already allowing the technology to make moral decisions—such as by using algorithms to figure out who to hire, whether to fund surgeries, or where to target bombs. This withers people’s capacity to think through these problems on their own, and perhaps more worryingly places the ability to broadly influence these choices in the hands of those who train and control AI technologies. This means that the moral philosophies of tech gurus will steadily guide the moral decisions of ever more people as these technologies gain wider purchase in society.

The pope has not issued a decree to dispense with AI, nor a definitive ruling on whether it is good or evil. In fact, the document doesn’t consider AI particularly special, though its specific risks are novel and serious. Instead, the pope positions the technology as merely one in a long lineage of such technologies, dating from the Tower of Babel, which promise power and glory at the expense of human uniqueness. Homogeneity, efficiency, and productivity are not what human life is about: Our calling isn’t to operate like computers, but to do exactly what computers cannot, which is to love.

MSW writes:

Three particular themes in the encyclical are of special note, and each in its way, points to the unique magnificence of humankind: Our anthropological vocation grounded in the revelation of Jesus Christ, our ability to collaborate with our creator God and our capacity for belief in that which we cannot see….

Leo acknowledges the ability of technology to improve lives and find cures to diseases and other evils that give rise to suffering. But, again, he prioritizes the singularly human dimension of life. In one of the most striking sentences in the entire document, he writes: “To eliminate suffering entirely would mean, in the end, extinguishing love and desire as well.”

These dangers do not primarily concern what the human person ought and ought not to do, but who the human person is and the need to differentiate between authentic and artificial human relationships. They are anthropological and they precede ethics.

Chris Crawford writes:

The central focus of Leo’s encyclical is to serve the “common good” — a word that appears 82 times throughout the document. Leo says the common good, “is a greater good that belongs to everyone, and it can only be achieved, nurtured and protected by our collective efforts.” He calls on government officials, tech leaders, and everyday people to think beyond what benefits ourselves as individuals and to build systems that serve everyone. He calls this service a “non-negotiable” for his flock: “For a Christian, going beyond the narrow confines of one’s own interests and committing oneself, within the limits of one’s ability, to the common good is a non-negotiable value, as is the promotion of life.”

Although he speaks on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church, Leo emphasizes that the work of serving the common good requires each of us. “We wish to engage in dialogue with all men and women of our time, with whom we share in the events, questions and aspirations of humanity,” he writes. “Together with them, we seek to identify new paths for the common good and for promoting a dignified life for all.” Building this vision for the common good requires “responsibility and courage” and for each of us to find our own piece of the work in serving our neighbors.