Pope Warns Against Reducing Human Beings to ‘Projects of Optimization’ Says AI Could Be Next Tower of Babel
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), addresses one of the defining challenges of the modern era: how artificial intelligence should be developed and used without undermining human dignity.
The encyclical, or formal teaching from Pope that teaches on matters of faith, morality, and social life, offering guidance to the Catholic Church and the wider world in response to major cultural, ethical, and historical questions. It does not function as law, but as a moral framework for interpreting contemporary issues.
Released Monday, the document reflects on the rapid rise of AI and its impact on work, truth, relationships, and human identity. “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 teaching begins.
The Pope went on to explain that there are two paths in front of humanity – building in the spirit of the Tower of Babel which ultimately divided people and disregarded God. Or building in a spirt of unity and under God’s design as seen in the book of Nehemiah and the wall around Jerusalem. Two very different motives and two very different outcomes. Likewise, humanity finds itself in a valley of decision.
The Pope writes, “In light of these two images, the Holy Spirit challenges us today regarding our relationship with technology and the ongoing digital revolution. Scientific discoveries are talents entrusted to humanity so that they may bear fruit (cf. Mt 25:14-30). Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice. In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it. Therefore, the primary choice is not between a “yes” or “no” to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence.”
The Pope went on to acknowledge familiar concerns such as job displacement, misinformation, privacy violations, algorithmic bias, and even autonomous weapons systems. But it warns that the deeper issue is cultural: a growing tendency to view human beings as “projects to be optimized” rather than persons with inherent dignity.
The encyclical argues that this “optimization mindset” risks redefining human worth in terms of efficiency, performance, and utility. Against this, Pope Leo XIV emphasizes that human limitation—aging, vulnerability, dependence, and suffering—is not something to be erased, but part of the conditions in which meaning, compassion, and moral growth often emerge.
Rather than rejecting artificial intelligence, Magnifica Humanitas calls for its responsible development and use. AI, it teaches, can support education, communication, healthcare, and the common good—but only if it remains ordered to human dignity and not treated as an autonomous standard of value.
The document also stresses the importance of truth in an AI-driven information environment, warning that disinformation and manipulated content can erode trust and weaken the foundations of public life. It calls for renewed commitment to honesty, accountability, and shared reality.
Addressed to Catholics and “all people of goodwill,” the encyclical frames AI as a moral, cultural, and technological issue: whether humanity will remain the measure of technology, or be reshaped by it.
Magnifica Humanitas insists that artificial intelligence must remain a tool in service of the human person—and that progress must always be judged not only by what it can do, but by what it does to human dignity, truth, and relationships.
