{"id":706373,"date":"2026-05-31T13:42:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T13:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/706373\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T13:42:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T13:42:16","slug":"americans-echo-pope-leos-concerns-about-ai-it-threatens-workers-privacy-and-human-life-pope-leo-xiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/706373\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans echo Pope Leo\u2019s concerns about AI: \u2018It threatens workers, privacy and human life\u2019 | Pope Leo XIV"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his first major papal text since assuming leadership of the Catholic church last year, Pope Leo issued a stark warning<\/a> about the rise of artificial intelligence this week, denouncing the \u201cculture of power\u201d driving the AI age.<\/p>\n

Calling for the \u201cmost rigorous\u201d ethical constraints on AI \u2013 which he described as one of the greatest threats facing humanity today \u2013 the first US-born pope also warned of \u201cnew forms of slavery\u201d emerging through the digital economy.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Guardian, readers in the US echoed the pope\u2019s concerns, describing AI as an \u201cunregulated\u201d industry increasingly being used to the \u201cdetriment of too many people\u201d, while also raising fears about surveillance<\/a>, labor displacement, war<\/a> and environmental harm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For Linda Given, a 74-year-old resident of Boston, Massachusetts, who ran a small gift store in Cambridge for nearly 40 years, the pope\u2019s warning resonated deeply.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s right to emphasize the dignity of humans, and to warn that things in the AI field are moving both too fast, and without any significant oversight,\u201d Given said, adding: \u201cTo use it as any kind of substitute for human interaction or human agency [is] awful \u2026 [and] the entirely likely possibility it could be manipulated to do destructive things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Sincoskie, a 55-year-old print shop supervisor from Howell, New Jersey, expressed similar concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnregulated AI is a possible threat to workers, privacy and even human life. Unfortunately, the most corrupt family in politics \u2026 is making money to look the other way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Stephen Sincoskie. Photograph: Courtesy of Stephen Sincoskie<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m concerned the use of AI will replace workers and assist in the ushering in of a fascistic surveillance state. I do not believe for one second the 1% are interested in paying out guaranteed monthly salaries for everyone to relax and enjoy a career and \u2018debt free\u2019 life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others focused on the effect AI is already having on education and critical thinking.<\/p>\n

Debra, a 58-year-old college professor in Massachusetts, said she worries students are losing critical thinking skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom my perspective, AI is robbing many students of the need to think critically, learn the ways of research and express themselves by writing,\u201d she said, before adding: \u201cI appreciate the perspective of the pope and just wish that the church could apply the logic used with respect to AI to their church\u2019s positions on matters relating to gender and sexuality. For instance, it\u2019s ridiculous that women cannot serve as priests in the church. That should be an easy one to fix, but unfortunately these supposedly holy men can\u2019t see their way clearly to recognizing that inherent human dignity extends to women too.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Scott Gibb, a 70-year-old retiree in California, the issue came down to moral leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone needs to have some moral clarity around this issue and it sure isn\u2019t Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. They are soulless,\u201d Gibb, who is not Catholic but supports Pope Leo, said.<\/p>\n

Lauren, a Baltimore, Maryland-based reader who works in international aid and relief, also praised the pope\u2019s intervention.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis encyclical and his remarks constitute much needed moral leadership in this time, especially when the tech leaders are interested mainly in profit at the expense of humanity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She also pointed to AI\u2019s environmental costs and growing use in warfare<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, AI is consuming natural resources and land at an alarming pace, for dubious benefits. At its best, if the product succeeds as tech leaders want it to, it will replace humans and make it difficult for regular people to earn a living. It is already used in war, and there are concerns it has accelerated conflicts and led to the killing of civilians. The expansion of AI is happening without any input from citizens, and the threat from AI is enormous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam Bakkila, a 37-year-old computer science and instructional designer based in New York City, agreed with many of the pope\u2019s criticisms.<\/p>\n

Sam Bakkila. Photograph: Courtesy of Sam Bakkila<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is being developed and pushed by some of the worst leaders in the American technology and venture capital industries, whose whole strategy is to move fast, break things, and take advantage of government bureaucracy\u2019s inability to regulate them in a timely manner to create hugely powerful monopolies before the government can catch up,\u201d Bakkila, whose livelihood depends on helping students use AI professionally, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s possible to understand anything happening in American politics right now without thinking through the impact of AI. I think that tech CEOs lined up behind Donald Trump knowing that this four-year period would be crucial for AI adoption, and that they supported him knowing that he would both avoid regulating AI and would secure hundreds of billions of dollars of government funding for AI infrastructure and integrating AI into defense networks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bakkila continued: \u201cAI is pushing American corporations further towards monopolies \u2026 and these corporations have now realized that it is in their interest to secure a political environment that will not regulate them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul, a 67-year-old former professor of ethics and logic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, compared AI to nuclear weapons, arguing that both possess the capacity for mass harm.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey both target everywhere and nearly anyone on the planet. Why have nukes never been used? Simply put: humans successfully applied commonly held ethical\/moral rules to prevent their use. Absent my nation\u2019s gross folly in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they\u2019ve not been used since. We have, worldwide, invoked a shared ethical stance: we shall not use them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI has equal power to create conditions\/actions to harm, even kill millions of humans. It is designed to enslave us. Yet, there isn\u2019t a whit of ethical programming built in, except to serve a global oligarchy in domination of everything,\u201d Paul added.<\/p>\n

Not all readers, however, agreed that the pope\u2019s views should carry particular authority in the global debate on AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand why the pope\u2019s remarks should have any bearing on anything whatsoever. In an increasingly secular world, why does somebody who claims to speak for an alleged deity have any relevance?\u201d said Charlie Hinkle, a 60-year-old tech worker from Charlotte, North Carolina.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cThe Catholic church might be the largest organized religion in the world, but its believers have long seemed to go their own way on issues (contraception, LGBTQ rights, women\u2019s empowerment, etc). The pope, as far as I am concerned, is irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 76-year-old firefighter based in Oklahoma similarly dismissed the broader framing of religion versus AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find the debate over AI versus religion, any religion, to be pointless, akin to arguing which is worse, Ebola or hantavirus, when both are equally odious. The insistence on a reliance on either religion or AI exposes a serious weakness in the human condition, that being the need for some external validation or support, which leads to manipulation and use of the individual by the purveyors of one or the other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his first major papal text since assuming leadership of the Catholic church last year, Pope Leo issued…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-706373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}