Guided by Pope Leo, time for people of faith to lead

Pope Leo now stands as the key moral figure whose voice has been clear about peace and social justice.

(Courtesy photo of Dado Ruvic)

We are living in a very stressful era of political division, authoritarianism, war and massive natural disasters caused by climate change. Forces of social and economic change such as artificial intelligence are accelerating a change in our very way of life, similar to other historical times like the Gilded Age and the beginning of the atomic era after World War II. The coming change in this era was recently and dramatically evidenced by a parade of robots in an athletic competition in China, reflecting the march of artificial intelligence. AI is unleashing stark fears that it will affect everything good and bad, bringing medical cures, while also threatening jobs and people with autonomous warfare.

The new era of tech is also beginning to upend our social fabric with growing income inequality, wealth and political power for oligarchs in industries which require massive amounts of energy from data centers. The disruption to the landscape and energy supplies is now being strongly opposed in rural and urban areas alike. Citizens also wonder if the government is listening to their concerns about a mass surveillance state with companies profiting off facial recognition technology sold to governments. Even some of the titans of tech fear that AI is close already to being able to go rogue and override human control like some sci-fi horror movies of our childhoods that fictionalized an imaginary future world. 

The worry about these technological changes brings to mind another era of unease and rapid change at the beginning of the Cold War. General Omar Bradley in a November 1948 speech in Boston famously said, “We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.” 

In that vein, Pope Leo’s recent encyclical about AI, “Magnifica Humanitas,” comes 100 years after a historic encyclical by Pope Leo XIII: “Rerum Novarum” (“Of New Things”) about the dignity of workers during the wealth of the Gilded Age. Pope Leo’s new encyclical confirms the importance of the dramatic changes facing humankind due to artificial intelligence. It is a call for humans to remain in control of technology’s social changes, respecting the primacy of human dignity and God-given graces of empathy, compassion and love which machines cannot reproduce.

How this era ultimately unfolds we do not know. It could continue to spiral out of control as it did 100 years ago. Political strongmen don’t stand down or admit defeat. Tech titans resist social and economic regulation. The question now is whether citizens and people of faith can lead a new moral era to tame the excesses of autocrats and oligarchs, or if these leaders will take their countries down with them again into a bigger economic catastrophe and more dangerous wars.

Pope Leo now stands as the key moral figure whose voice has been clear about peace and social justice. We must hope and pray his wisdom prevails to channel new technologies to serve all people and improve our quality of life with new scientific advances rather than further divide and endanger us.

Michael Burgess is the director of the Catholic Charities’ Commission on Peace and Justice.