The Pope warns about artificial intelligence: "No algorithm can make war moral"

Artificial intelligence "is not neutral", warns Pope Leo XIV in the encyclical Magnifica humanitas, dedicated to the protection of human dignity, where he warns of the danger that this technology "concentrates in a few hands". In the first major document of his pontificate, published this Monday, Leo XIV, a mathematician and canon lawyer, follows in the footsteps of Leo XIII's "Rerum novarum

" to update the social doctrine of the Church in the face of one of the main challenges of the contemporary era: artificial intelligence.

"There is no algorithm that can make war morally acceptable",

states Pope Leo XIV, and warns that the use of artificial intelligence in armed conflicts reduces victims "to data". In the document, the pontiff condemns "the close connection between economic interests, military apparatuses and political decisions".

The 110-page document, which the Pope personally presented this Monday, has a chapter dedicated to the "culture of power", in which he denounces that "the digital revolution is modifying the grammar of conflicts", and warns that "to visible war are added hybrid forms: cyber attacks, information manipulation, influence campaigns and automation of strategic decisions". "AI enters these processes as an accelerating factor" and "can enhance the defense and protection of civilians, but it can also lower the threshold for the use of force, make responsibilities opaque, and fuel a culture in which the enemy is reduced to data and the victim to collateral damage", indicates the pontiff in his document.

"Modern Babel"

In what he calls "the modern Babel," Leo XIV laments the existence of "opposed imperialisms between powers that wish to preserve their primacy and powers that aspire to conquer it, with a multiplicity of local conflicts." "It is, moreover, the race to develop ever more powerful technologies or to secure control over them, according to a dehumanizing dynamic that seems to know no limits," he explains.

This culture of power "penetrates society, modifies relationships and behaviors, expands by normalizing war, pursuing ever greater military power, taking advantage of the crisis of multilateralism and feeding a false realism, which repeats that there are no alternatives." And in this sense, the Pope adds, "communication networks, fragmented information environments, and algorithms that reward confrontation can amplify polarization and resentment, accelerate propaganda, and hinder common discernment."

In this climate, "where humanity is falling into the violent culture of power, where peace is no longer presented as a task to be undertaken, but as a precarious interval between conflicts," the Pope highlights the importance of "reiterating the overcoming of the theory of just war, invoked too frequently to justify any war, without prejudice to the right to legitimate defense, understood in the strictest sense."