A Creation Without Soul, Without Conscience And Without Love

Attendees include execs from Google, Meta, Palantir, IBM, Anthropic and Cohere.

The new Pope, Leo XIV, took his name from Leo XIII who, in the 1890s, challenged the robber baron tycoons who dominated an age of rapid technological change which exploited workers.

In 1891, Leo XIII issued an  encyclical called Rerum Novarum (Of New Things) in which he stated: “The hiring of labour and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the labouring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.”

In his first address to the College of Cardinals after his enthronement last month, Leo XIV said: “Today, the church offers its trove of social teaching to respond to another industrial revolution and to innovations in the field of artificial intelligence that pose challenges to human dignity, justice and labour.”

A Chicago-born maths graduate, Leo XIV sees AI as “a creation made without soul, guided without conscience and driven without love.”