Pope Leo XIV on Monday warned about the "new forms of slavery" behind artificial intelligence, from content moderators to miners, and called for greater regulation.
"If technology promises emancipation, yet produces new forms of global subordination, it stands in contradiction to the fundamental principle of human dignity. The fight against new forms of slavery is a decisive test for the ethical discernment of AI," the pope wrote in the encyclical "Magnifica Humanitas" (Magnificent Humanity).
The pontiff also called for AI to be "disarmed" and made "human-friendly" in a major text on the ethical challenges raised by the boom of the new technology.
Pope Leo XIV warned against "a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance."
The comments come after the pontiff marked Pentecost on Sunday with a plea for peace, praying that humanity might be saved “from the evil of war."
