Op-Ed: Pope's AI Directive Misses the Moment

Pope Leo XIV's first big statement on artificial intelligence lands with a thud, argues Matthew Walther in the New York Times, who finds the new papal encyclical more cautious handbook than bracing manifesto. "Disappointingly measured and cautious," "uninspired and unfocused," and perhaps even "naive," the document treats AI as a technology to be ethically managed, not a force to be resisted outright, which Walther thinks misses the moment. For him, AI is "unambiguously evil," and the Chicago-born pope underestimates its ability "to exacerbate existing crises and to accelerate processes of cheapening and redefinition."

According to Walther, Leo even draws the wrong lesson from the Tower of Babel, a top-down, profit-driven construction he uses as an example of how not to approach technology. The moral of the story is not that the tower should've been built more ethically, but that it shouldn't have been built at all, Walther writes. He also questions the optics of having Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah onstage at the encyclical's presentation, likening it to inviting a Gilded Age tycoon to a speech on "the dignity of labor." For him, the real Catholic answer to technological overreach will come from the Church quietly modeling older human-centered practices and a sacramental life that resists being digitized. Read his piece in full at the Times.