New Pope Leo XIV cites AI’s challenge to human dignity in his name choice

The name choice of a brand new pope carries symbolism for the values he needs to emulate, in recognition of essentially the most urgent points he sees as chief of the Catholic Church.

For Pope Leo XIV, synthetic intelligence is on the coronary heart of his name choice.

Born Robert Francis Prevost, the brand new pope selected his papal name in reference to Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) who presided over the Catholic Church through the Industrial Revolution, which ushered in large social upheaval. Pope Leo XIV sees the AI growth as the same second of speedy societal change.

In his address to the School of Cardinals on Saturday, Leo XIV defined his name choice, explicitly mentioning the parallels of those two cataclysmic eras:

Sensing myself known as to proceed in this similar path, I selected to take the name Leo XIV. There are totally different causes for this, however primarily as a result of Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social query in the context of the primary nice industrial revolution. In our personal day, the Church presents to everybody the treasury of her social instructing in response to one other industrial revolution and to developments in the sphere of synthetic intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour.

Pope Leo XIII was identified for specializing in social inequality and labor rights through the industrialization interval as staff moved away from particular person craftsmanship and farm work and into mass manufacturing factories underneath harsh, low-wage circumstances. But he additionally emphasised particular person human rights and rejected socialism. In his encyclical, or formal letter to the Catholic Church, Leo XIII known as for a steadiness between “the duties and rights of capital and labor,” which can also be the subtitle of his Rerum Novarum tackle.

For Leo XIV to observe in the footsteps of the earlier social reformer is a strong message to the AI trade and its influence on the worldwide workforce.

Fashionable society has already seen the results of AI by means of job substitute and the exploitation of data labelers. In accordance to the World Financial Discussion board’s 2025 jobs report, 41 p.c of employers intend to downsize their workforce in favor of automating duties with AI. And the Worldwide Labor Group printed a 2024 report highlighting the “invisible labor” of AI improvement and the low-wages and the restricted protections of those staff.

The Catholic Church has already weighed in on different penalties of AI. Pope Francis, Leo’s predecessor, published a message in January 2024, warning about AI as a “distortion of actuality by partially or utterly false narratives, believed and broadcast as in the event that they have been true.” Extra just lately, Pope Francis’ closing tackle earlier than he died mirrored on expertise changing human interplay.