By Father Shay Cullen
The strong and clear challenge posed by Pope Leo XIV in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, [Magnificent Humanity], declares the sacred value of every human life. It is a powerful statement of moral value that asserts the dignity and rights of every person. This comes at a time when people, especially women and children, are being deprived of their humanity and treated as objects to be exploited and abused, with their rights eroded or denied.
Human lives are being damaged almost beyond repair by a new kind of tyrant. Not the human kind that maims and kills, but a powerful, electronic force that has begun invading mobile phones—and by extension, the hearts and minds—of thousands of children and other vulnerable people. It is called artificial intelligence [AI].
AI can be a valuable tool for education, research, and programming machines and computers, but it is also a dangerous one that can be used to harm, exploit, and oppress people.
In the hands of unscrupulous tycoons and paedophiles, it can be abused for mass digital manipulation and exploitation, and for producing child abuse materials. It can also be employed to programme drones and other aircraft, as well as lethal weapons in autonomous warfare.
Pope Leo makes clear the dangers inherent in AI abuse.
Government agencies around the world use AI algorithms to discriminate against some people. These algorithms can be designed to identify and systematically eliminate or block certain individuals from gaining access to education, employment, loans, and healthcare. AI programmes can discriminate based on a person’s colour, race, social status, and educational or ethnic background.
Human lives are being damaged almost beyond repair by a new kind of tyrant. Not the human kind that maims and kills, but a powerful, electronic force that has begun invading mobile phones—and by extension, the hearts and minds—of thousands of children and other vulnerable people. It is called artificial intelligence
This is what lies behind the social justice crisis that Pope Leo discusses in his encyclical. It places people, their dignity, and their rights before digital power, and challenges the tycoons who use AI without control or constraint to earn billions of dollars. The AI-based decisions made using data collected from people are “tainted by prejudice and injustice,” the pope says.
Pope Leo argues that tech tycoons hold a monopoly over powerful technology programmes, and billions of people are now dependent on them. These tycoons control the content that people read, listen to, and experience. Many have been manipulated and exploited by these AI programmes. This is what Pope Leo is denouncing.
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The AI-driven algorithms used by these tycoons are gathering personal data and working like secret law enforcers, treating people’s private lives as raw material to be exploited, owned, and monetised without their participation or consent. Pope Leo considers this massive collection of personal information a digital form of imperialism, calling it “digital neocolonialism”.
By using the AI capabilities of their search engines, these tech companies acquire, through their platforms, personal health records, genetic data, and demographic information of millions of people, especially in politically weaker or developing nations such as the Philippines, where users are unaware they are being digitally exploited every time they open their computers or mobile phones.
This data is used to train predictive AI models that expand this exploitation and generate profit for corporations through advertising, and even political manipulations to influence elections. Connectivity between people through their social media platforms may be helpful, but in general, these platforms do not serve humanity.
AI can be a valuable tool for education, research, and programming machines and computers, but it is also a dangerous one that can be used to harm, exploit, and oppress people
‘Mere cogs in a system’
Some corporations are using AI to gather personal information on millions of people and sell this to corporations and government agencies for surveillance purposes. Other bad actors can also use that information to harass, threaten, and blackmail or extract money or sexual favours from others, especially children. It can be said that personal privacy is almost non-existent for millions of people using AI-driven tools.
This is what Pope Leo is challenging in Magnifica Humanitas. He clearly denounces a business mindset that reduces people to commodities, where every human choice is dictated exclusively by measures of efficiency and profit.
Pope Leo warns that this reduces human beings to “mere cogs in a system” and risks making society view vulnerable lives—such as the sick, elderly, or impoverished—as less useful, even disposable.
Among those leading the AI industry and promoting the technology’s benefits for humanity is Chris Olah, co-founder of the company Anthropic, which developed an AI tool called Claude AI. It is an AI assistant capable of highly advanced reasoning, document analysis, and mathematics.
Olah joined Pope Leo in the Vatican Synod Hall, where he said AI companies must follow an ethical code of conduct, and developers must be held accountable.
Pope Leo argues that tech tycoons hold a monopoly over powerful technology programmes, and billions of people are now dependent on them. These tycoons control the content that people read, listen to, and experience. Many have been manipulated and exploited by these AI programmes
“We need informed critics who will tell the labs when we are failing. We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend,” Olah said, speaking for AI developers with a moral conscience who live by a code of ethics.
Olah acknowledged that computer scientists alone cannot determine ethical boundaries. He said the driving forces behind these developers are not of a spiritual or ethical nature, but are continuously influenced by incentives such as ambition, competition, and financial pressure.
He also said companies like his need structured moral guidance to guard against “incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing”.
Doing the “right thing” is to develop AI software that serves humanity and protects both children and adults by detecting, blocking, and erasing damaging child abuse images. The work of the Preda Foundation is helping young victims of sexual abuse, including cases where 12- and 13-year-old boys have raped six-year-old girls.
The abusers have been influenced by easily accessible sexual abuse images viewed on their phones. Pope Leo, in Magnifica Humanitas, explicitly warned that providing personal mobile devices to children at too early an age without supervision “exacerbates their vulnerability to online exploitation, grooming, and extortion”.
We can add to that the moral corruption of young people by the AI-driven internet, which cannot distinguish right from wrong and is driven by AI-generated images that encourage sexual assault against children.
Pope Leo said modern corporate AI algorithms are designed to propagate and display images that attract viewers, especially young people, to buy digital connections to get online and view illegal images. This is intended to maximise profits.
The addiction of children and adults to social media platforms and illegal content is a corrupting influence that must be stopped. Some countries, such as Australia and Indonesia, have passed legislation restricting minors from accessing social media platforms, and more nations are planning similar measures. The Philippines should do likewise to protect its children and national dignity.
