Leo XIV Warns Decisions “Are Being Entrusted to Machines”

His Holiness is spot on! Technology is, indeed, being concentrated in the hands of a few. In fact, in the hands of a few billionaires, like Bezos and Musk.

From Aleteia

By Daniel Esaparza

Speaking to international public administration scholars, the Pope called for ethical frameworks to govern AI — and warned that technology is concentrating in the hands of a few.

Leo XIV received members of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences in the Vatican on Friday, August 28, at the close of their annual conference in Rome; the Holy See is itself a member of the group. The Pope's address, brief and direct, focused almost entirely on artificial intelligence and its governance, framing the question as one of urgent ethical responsibility for public administrators worldwide.

The Pope opened by noting that the Institute’s conference theme — on maintaining balance in the use of digital technologies — “launches a vibrant appeal to our world in the digital age” that connects directly to his own encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. He then named the core problem without preamble: “The speed at which innovations in artificial intelligence are developing pushes us to ask whether we will be able to control these machines in the future, whether humanity does not risk becoming the victim of its own inventions.”

His diagnosis of the present situation was equally pointed. “One of the serious problems today is the observation that decisions concerning human life are being entrusted to machines.” The sentence is short and carries the weight of the entire address. The concern is not abstract — it is operational, immediate, and directed at the people in the room whose work is precisely the administration of public life.

Facing what he called this “worrying situation,” Leo welcomed the conference’s goal of reaffirming “the irreplaceable character of human intelligence in the face of these technological tools.” He quoted Magnifica Humanitas directly: “Calling for prudence, for rigorous controls and sometimes even for a slowdown in the adoption of AI does not mean being against progress, but showing responsible concern for the human family.”

Power concentrated in a few

The Pope raised the question of concentration of power as a specific structural concern. It is important, he said, that an ethical framework accompany the use of these tools, “which unfortunately are concentrated in the hands of major economic and technological actors, and which the State struggles to control.” The common good, he insisted, must not be sacrificed to private interests: “It is essential to ensure that the good of the human family is not sacrificed for private interests.”

Leo closed by connecting his call to that of Pope Francis, quoting his predecessor's Message for the 57th World Day of Peace in January 2024: “We have the duty to broaden our gaze and to orient techno-scientific research toward peace and the common good, for the service of the integral development of the human person and of the community.”

The International Institute of Administrative Sciences was founded in 1930, in the aftermath of the global economic crisis, with the stated vocation — as quoted by Leo from a 1950 address by Pius XII — of being “a constant appeal to the conscience of political authorities to adapt social life to the continually changing conditions of the times, so that it may realize the intentions and plans of the Wisdom of the Creator.”