Pope Leo XIV's Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas Warns of AI Risks, Yet Spiritual Dimensions Are Overlooked
The Pope Warned Us About AI. But We’re Missing the Spiritual Question.
AI summary
Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, warns of AI risks to labor, truth, war, and inequality, but the author argues that AI's spiritual impact on prayer, confession, and moral discernment is overlooked in mainstream policy discussions. The author proposes a "sacred data ethics" framework, stating that spiritual expressions become "sacred data" that can be extracted, modeled, and reused once input into AI. U.S. privacy law does not distinguish sacred expression from ordinary data, and priest-penitent confidentiality privilege has not been extended to AI.