What’s in a Name
The newly-annointed Pope Leo XIV — formerly cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago, Illinois — revealed this weekend that his name choice was inspired in part by AI, which he sees as a possible threat to human rights and justice.
As Business Insider reports, the Chicago Pope took time during his first Sunday address to share how AI shaped the symbolic task of choosing his papal name. The last Pope Leo, Leo XIII, headed the church amid the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, an era defined by rapid technological advancement, rampant labor exploitation, severe wealth inequality, and public health crises.
During his papacy, Pope Leo XIII was deeply concerned with the collateral social damage wrought by unchecked technological innovation. Now, seeing similarities between the technological shifts of centuries past, Leo XIV is ready to pick up where his immediate predecessor, Pope Francis, left off, holding the potential social costs of AI advancement front and center.
“Sensing myself called to continue in this same path, I chose to take the name Leo XIV,” the new Pope said during the landmark speech, according to BI. “There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum’ addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”
“In our own day,” he continued, “the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor.”
Undignified AI
The new Pope on the block has a point. Though public-facing products, like AI-powered chatbots and image generators, appear in sleek interfaces on computer and phone screens, they come with some considerable costs behind the scenes.
Case in point, Elon Musk’s massive xAI datacenter in Memphis, which has been polluting a predominantly Black neighborhood with smoggy fumes, worsening air quality in an area that already tops lists for emergency room visits for asthma.
Energy-hungry data centers are also leading to conflicts over water use, and have caused tech giants like Google to miss climate targets.
The public is also grappling with growing concerns over the psychological impacts of generative AI products like AI companions and assistants, particularly their impacts on kids and people with mental health concerns. The tech also continues to be a remarkably efficient and low-cost way to produce misinformation and deepfakes.
In short, much like his predecessor, Pope Leo XIV appears to be well aware of the many “challenges” we face in the age of AI.
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