The Indicator from Planet Money - Why the Pope wants to disarm AI

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

Over 100 years ago, Pope Leo XIII wrote a seminal letter encouraging workers to unionize in the face of industrialization. The current Pope Leo XIV in his seminal letter warned of an economic disruption from today that threatens workers - Artificial Intelligence.Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.Your Next Listen — Jobs numbers, immigrants in healthcare, and ... Jesus Christ?Connect with The Indicator — Sign up for The Indicator’s weekly newsletter!— Buy the Planet Money book— Find our socials, YouTube and more!— For sponsor-free episodes, subscribe to NPR+ See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. In May, Pope Leo the 14th issued his very first encyclical. Catholic popes have been doing this for hundreds of years. Encyclicals are letters that they write to the Catholic Church, often laying out their thoughts on social and moral issues. Kind of like album drops of the Catholic world. And Pope Leo convened a gathering at the Vatican for the release of his encyclical, entitled Magnifica Humanitas, Magnificent Humanity.

Your brothers and sisters. I want to thank all of you for being here today, for your interest. Popes get to choose their papal names, and Pope Leo the 14th picked his name to honor Pope Leo the 13th. 135 years ago, my venerable predecessor, Leo the 13th, observed the situation of factory workers, their families, uprooted, and new forms of poverty generated by rapid industrial transformation. He understood that the church could not remain distant. Pope Leo XIV, invoked his predecessor to warn against a different kind of technological upheaval. Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed.

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong. And I'm Darien Woods. It's not often that we cover religion on this show, but we are in a moment where the Pope himself is calling for AI to be reined in for the good of humanity. and he's directly addressing tech leaders. In fact, anthropic co-founder Chris Olau was invited to that event at the Vatican. So today on the show, we look at two Pope Leo's more than a century apart, and their takes on the economic and technological disruptions of their days. Starting in the late 1800s, an Italian pope named Leo the 13th wrote more than 80 encyclicals.

Arguably, his most famous one was called Rarum Navarum, which translates to of new things. The new things at that time was socialism and social democratic labor parties. Workers in Europe and the U.S. were interested in joining these movements. That's according to Janine Giordano Drake. She's a history professor at Indiana University who studies both labor and American Christianity. The Pope was asked to take a stand on the question, can Christian workers be socialists? Can the church support a socialist democratic organization?

This is one of the questions the Pope tackled in his encyclical And his short answer, no. He says that families deserve the opportunity to own private property because that provides a certain sense of dignity. And he's really concerned about the possibility of sort of radical state socialism where there's no more private property. So that was a strong warning against a certain kind of socialism. But Janine says the Pope did side with these 19th century socialists on some important points,

like the idea that the current economic system was unfair to workers. It does extract value basically from workers and concentrate it in capital. And the Pope does call on workers to try to rectify that problem by forming unions and making demands for workers on behalf of human dignity. Janine says the Pope was concerned about the unequal distribution of wealth. He encouraged workers to form mutual benefit associations. These were groups that offered members certain kinds of life insurance or health insurance. and the Pope was also in favor of trade unions. Here in the U.S., one of the dominant labor unions at the time was the American Federation of Labor.

Its president, Samuel Gombers, was not Catholic. Even so, Janine says, he recognized how powerful the Pope's encyclical could be for recruiting workers. He knows that such a large number of workers in these factories and mines are Catholics. And so by using that language, it's a very pragmatic decision to try to get workers to agree to join these. unions. The Pope's letter wasn't just an effective recruiting tool. Janine says the American Federation of Labor took some of the Pope's ideas and made them explicit priorities. These included better working conditions, protection for women and children, and shorter work weeks. Janine says the Pope also supported what we today call a living wage. That's in some ways the most

important part, and most radical part of this document is saying that workers deserve more than just enough to live on. It's very exciting to many people that the Pope or the Catholic Church doesn't just want you to get by and doesn't just want you to make, you know, as many profits as possible for the owners of capital. That particularly is the part of an environment that many people hear and get excited about. These issues are still relevant for workers today. And there's a significant new challenge, worker displacement from AI. And this is where the new Pope Leo comes in. Today, we find ourselves facing a transformation of similar magnitude, with perhaps even greater consequences. Artificial intelligence already touches many areas of our lives and affects decisions that shape human coexistence.

Pope Leo says he recognizes AI can make things more efficient. I mean, just look at the speed and simplicity of accessing complex information. Other Catholic leaders agree. Father Enzo Del Brocco is a priest in Chicago with degrees in human resources in health care ethics. He's currently the president of the Catholic Theological Union, a graduate school of theology, and also Pope Leo's alma mater. He says AI is very useful for research. The question here is not so much AI itself, but really who are we as human beings in this age and how can we keep ourselves human? and how can this new discovery really serve us as human beings and serve the common good?

He can recall some AI experiments in the last couple of years. For example, a Catholic media platform created a priest chatbot called Father Justin. This AI priest gave one news outlet conflicting answers about whether it was authorized to hear a confession. That checks out. I mean, people look to chatbots for advice and friendship and romance. I guess they also want absolution, too. Yeah, and this is kind of what Pope Leo is warning about in his encyclical. He says AI can create the illusion of a real human relationship.

And the danger to people is that they might gradually lose their desire to form actual bonds with other humans. I think the risk of confusion that can happen in some people, because AI, you know, the way it relates, we give almost like a person's name, actually, you know. Yes, right? We, like, anthropomorphize it, right? Yes, and when you anthropomorphize the AI, says, wait, wait, what are we really doing? here. Like, you know, the way they're kind at the beginning and they always are condescending. It's almost like they're treating you with real feelings, but it's not.

Pope Leo's encyclical addressed concrete economic concerns with AI too, like environmental impacts and who controls and owns the technology. The letter says data should not be treated as something to be sold off or entrusted to a select few. So does the Pope want to get involved in regulating big tech? Well, he acknowledges that he's not a technical exercise. He says what he and the church bring to the table is wisdom concerning the human. Maybe something even the smartest AI can't replicate. Reminded, the Indicator Newsletter comes out tomorrow morning. We bring you the news that we talk about behind the scenes every Friday.

This week, we're talking about the latest champion of electric vehicle charges, which is the fried chicken chain bejangles. How did that happen? We have the answer. And much more. If you haven't already signed up, the link is in our show. show notes. This episode was produced by Corey Bridges and engineer by Anli Huang. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kaking Cannon is our show's editor and The Indicator is a production of NPR.