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Grandeur of Humanity in the Age of AI

  • Writer: Brendan Case
    Brendan Case
  • May 27
  • 6 min read

Updated: 6 days ago


AI must be judged by whether it helps us think more deeply, work more justly, and love more faithfully.


By Brendan Case and Tyler J. VanderWeele


Key points


  • AI should serve human flourishing, not efficiency alone. The encyclical frames AI through dignity, the common good, solidarity, subsidiarity, and social justice, asking whether technology helps people become more humane, relational, and responsible.

  • AI risks weakening core human capacities. Pope Leo warns that overreliance on AI can diminish creativity, judgment, knowledge, and genuine relationships, especially when people mistake machine-generated outputs for neutral truth or simulated interaction for real connection.

  • Work remains central to human dignity. The piece emphasizes that automation must protect employment, retraining, and worker participation, because work is not merely economic production but a pathway to maturity, dignity, and flourishing.


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An Encyclical on AI


The topic of AI has dominated much public discourse recently, and we thus discussed flourishing considerations for AI in our March newsletter. This past week, Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” Many of the themes resonated with what we put forward, including the need to preserve human reason and creativity, the potential threats to human knowledge and human relationships, and on work as a pathway to flourishing. Pope Leo even comments on the importance of well-being measures beyond GDP in advancing societal flourishing.

 

His letter, in fact, commemorates the 135th anniversary of the publication of the previous Pope Leo (XIII)’s Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”), which launched the tradition of “social encyclicals” with reflections on the social, economic, and political transformations within society. Pope Leo XIV seeks to bring the riches of Catholic social teaching to bear on the prospects and perils of the AI revolution. An intervention on so urgent a topic by an observer as eminent as the Pope arguably ought to be of interest to all people of goodwill, and it thus seemed worth reflecting upon further. These matters are critical for the future of our world. Earlier this month, I (Tyler) spent two days at Anthropic headquarters with co-founder Chris Olah and others discussing flourishing, ethics, and AI; it truly was impressive how seriously they were wrestling with these issues, and therefore fitting and heartening also to have Chris Olah’s presence and remarks at the release of the encyclical, again reaffirming the importance of these issues.

 

Our aim here is not to offer a complete summary of the Pope’s rich reflections, but rather to consider how Magnifica Humanitas deepens our own previous reflections on orienting AI to human flourishing, and to invite readers – particularly those from outside the Catholic community – into a sustained engagement with it.


AI and Society


Magnifica Humanitas is not principally a reflection on the nature of AI itself, though Pope Leo notes in passing that AI does not undergo experiences, or feel joy, or understand what is produced, but “merely imitates certain functions of human intelligence.” Rather, his aim is to discern how to orient AI to the common good, without yielding to a “technocratic paradigm,” which “lets the logic of efficiency, control and profit alone shape personal, social and economic decisions.”

 

Much of our proposal on flourishing considerations for AI concerned either developers or users of AI technologies, but as we noted, there are much broader societal, national, and international concerns as well, and these too are addressed by the encyclical letter. The letter in fact draws upon the rich Catholic social tradition, beginning with the dignity of the human person and the priority of the “common good” – the sum of social goods which must be cultivated and enjoyed in common and the further principles of the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity, and social justice specify how the common good is realized in practice, with the universal destination of goods clarifying that materials goods are to sustain the lives of all, subsidiarity commending the cultivation and administration of those goods as locally and organically as possible, and solidarity identifying the mutual responsibility of each person for all others, while “social justice is […] the capacity of a social, economic and political order to allow everyone — particularly the weakest — to live a truly dignified life, without leaving anyone behind.”


These principles provide the criteria for assessing progress in “integral human development” – what we would call “flourishing”. Pope Leo proposes that we ask of particular problems and prospects of AI the question “Do they truly help individuals and peoples to become more humane and fraternal, while respecting our common home and future generations?”

 

Drawing upon these principles, Pope Leo asks us to consider the prospects and perils of AI tools, beginning with their potential effects on individuals’ cognitive and relational capacities. He writes, “The ease with which results are obtained” using tools such as large language models can “weaken personal creativity and judgment”; the impression of objectivity they convey can lead us to mistake “the cultural assumptions of those who designed and trained them” for the nature of things; and their “simulation of human communication” can “create the illusion of a relationship with a real personal subject,” with the risk that users “may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections.” Without rejecting these new technologies, Pope Leo emphasizes that “educating people about the use of AI […] involves teaching them to decide when and for what purpose it ought not to be used.”

 

Pope Leo identifies a number of potentially disruptive collective impacts from AI, including the environmental impact of the huge, water-guzzling data centers that power the technology; the mistreatment of low-paid workers who create training data or mine the “rare earth elements” which are critical for the production of the chips that run leading AI models; or the risk that AI will make wars more common and impersonal. He offers critical principles to guide ethical discussion on these matters. The discussion of criteria and requirements for weapons and AI is perhaps especially incisive, insisting on personal responsibility, adequate time for human deliberation, protection for civilians, capacity to retrace decision-making, never automating lethal force, and the need for a shared international framework.


AI and Work


There are also potentially profound effects of AI on employment, with industry projections that these tools could automate tens of millions of jobs on a relatively short timeline. Resuming a theme that goes back to Rerum Novarum, the encyclical notes, “work is not simply an instrument; it expresses and enhances the dignity of our lives. It is a requirement of the human condition, a normal path toward maturity, development, and personal fulfilment.” As such, “the protection of employment opportunities and the irreplaceable role of the individual must remain the general rule,” or, as we would say it, work is a critical pathway to human flourishing.

 

It is thus important that “every introduction of automation and AI should be accompanied by verifiable measures to protect the employment, retraining and participation of workers.” While Pope Leo acknowledges that the taxation and redistribution of any windfall profits that accrue to AI firms might become necessary, he emphasizes that “the pursuit of social justice should not be considered a separate issue that follows only after the production of wealth, as if the economy existed solely to create wealth, with politicians only intervening afterward in order to distribute it.” Welfare systems alone will not ensure human flourishing; we need meaningful work as well.


AI and the Future


Magnifica Humanitas concludes with a reflection on the prospect that AI tools will deepen and entrench a “culture of power” instead of fostering a “civilization of love.” The Pope observes, “There seems to be no limit to the race — driven by a dehumanizing ambition — to develop evermore powerful technologies or to secure control over them”. The Pope counters with what we suspect is the first-ever quotation of the Lord of the Rings in a papal encyclical: “‘It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.’ The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization.” We need to foster love to promote flourishing.

 

This call to individual and collective responsibility is an important contrast both to the prophecies of doom, and the promises of utopia, which dominate so much contemporary commentary on AI. Without discounting the importance of preparing for worst-case scenarios or striving for truly transformative technological breakthroughs, the most important impacts of AI in the near-term will be those on our hearts and minds. At the Human Flourishing Program, we are seeking to orient all engagement with AI towards flourishing. Every day we hold onto and even strengthen our ability to think, to work, or to love is a small victory for humanity in the face of the inhuman project of potentially trying to escape it.




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Reference


VanderWeele, T.J. and Teubner J.D. (2026). Flourishing considerations for AI. Information, 17:88.


 



 
 
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