Kevin Hughes

Reading the encyclical, I am reminded that the Vatican is fundamentally a city-state on the continent of Europe, and that its elites, which of course include the Pope himself, cannot resist the myopic preoccupations of the Eurocrat. This document would be much improved if it were less enamored of the traditional academia/civil society talking points on AI (“The apparent objectivity of the responses and suggestions these systems provide can lead us to overlook the fact that they reflect the cultural assumptions of those who designed and trained them” woah! really???) and more engaged with where AI is headed. But instead of doing that, the encyclical dodges in the deepest sense, denying that AI “really thinks” or “really learns” and all that typical strain of cope that amounts to magical thinking: “when a computer does it, it is ‘data processing,’ beep boop, but when a human does it, it is ‘actual learning’” It is probably actively bad for global understanding of AI that the Pope endorsed this viewpoint as late as 2026. In the end, this encyclical reads to me as though ghost written by the blob of Western civil society, the same people whose feckless and incoherent preaching we have heard blanketing our media for decades now. And, in a very important sense, it was written by them; after all, who forms the peer group for the elites of a European city-state? Like that blob, the encyclical is intellectually flaccid at its core, no matter how well intentioned it may be. This document is a missed opportunity to advance global understanding of AI, and yet another blow to the legitimacy and sanctity of storied Western institutions. As if you needed one more.