Yulia Razmetaeva is a researcher at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society at Uppsala University (Sweden) and head of the Center for Law, Ethics, and Digital Technologies at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University (Ukraine).
This post is a part of our series on Magnifica Humanitas.
On 25 May 2026, the first Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Leo XIV “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence” was released. Consisting of 42,088 words in English, the document offers a holistic, profound, and bold look at the consequences of technocratic dominance, the digital revolution whose fruits are enjoyed by a few, and the asymmetric deployment and use of technologies, especially artificial intelligence. The letter was met with an immediate wave of enthusiastic praise and memes in both traditional and social media, since it clearly outlined concerns about technologies, challenges for humanity, and ways to protect the human person in the age of AI.
While grounded in a theological perspective, the encyclical nevertheless intertwines diverse viewpoints, using philosophical, legal, and even artistic references to call for protecting human dignity and preserving solidarity in the face of technologically driven threats—a message seemingly supported by the secular world. Remarkably, this message could well be interpreted as a powerful call for a renewed and genuine commitment to human rights. In this post, I examine the encyclical’s perspective on human rights and technology in greater depth.
Human dignity, a central foundation of human rights, lies at the core of Magnifica Humanitas (paras. 51–53). The encyclical repeatedly emphasizes the need to safeguard human dignity in various contexts, including resisting new forms of dehumanization (paras. 15–16), respecting the dignity of work (paras. 148–64), and limiting the use of autonomous weapons in warfare (paras. 197–200). Coupled with this need is “the pressing duty to remain profoundly human” (para. 15)—another key point that is especially important in the era of automation, when transhumanist promises of improving human beings and post-humanist promises of hybrid coexistence and integration with machines are often perceived as an inescapable future.
The letter boldly outlines claims that have been cautiously discussed and sometimes criticized as marginal in public debate and academic research. It states that technologies are not neutral, which means they can exacerbate inequality, exclusion (para. 85), and the biases of their creators (para. 102). It emphasizes that AI should not be equated with human intelligence and the realization of it, as AI systems only imitate and simulate human-like cognitive functions and behaviors (para. 99); avoiding this false equation may be no easy task considering the human tendency to attribute intelligence to systems that lack such functions and behaviors. It warns against technological divinization (para. 126) that is being fed by AI’s outstanding capabilities to outperform humans in terms of speed and computational power. And it argues that AI technologies can be valuable tools if used with caution and vigilance (paras. 100–101), but they cannot undergo human experience in its fullness (para. 99).
The challenges enumerated in the encyclical involve direct and indirect threats to human rights—for example, how AI can contribute to discrimination and deepen existing inequalities, how discriminatory algorithms are a pattern documented in various systems on a large scale rather than glitch (paras. 80, 95, 161), and how AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess various resources (para. 108). It mentions how certain models exploit vulnerability and create dependencies, affecting freedom (paras. 170–72). Generative AI, for example, has altered or exacerbated many human rights risks that have been created by the deployment and use of other artificial systems. In particular, GenAI provides advanced tools for aggregating data in ways that violate privacy, produces disinformation that distorts freedom of expression, and fuels intolerance that threatens freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.
The encyclical takes into account the broad context in which hidden threats to human rights are developing, such as the slow erosion of values facilitated by the technocratic view of human beings as means rather than ends (paras. 10, 152). Particular attention is paid to the fact that efficiency should not be the sole measure of the successful development of individuals and societies (paras. 37, 92, 112).
Equality and justice, the important pillars of human rights, run like a red thread through the encyclical. The necessity to bridge the gap between the included and excluded, between those who can participate and those who lack access to technologies, appears repeatedly in the document.
Moreover, the encyclical reflects on uniformity that neutralizes differences as something that can cause a detrimental effect for true equality and diversity (paras. 7–10). Although direct accusations are not made, the subtext is read as linking unhealthy uniformity with a certain technology-oriented worldview. Many manifestations are admired by technocrats yet raise serious concerns among human rights experts, including rejecting philosophy and social sciences as unnecessary for progress, attempting to solve complex social and cultural issues using computer science methods, conveying belief in unlimited “upgrades” and “optimizations” of individuals and societies, pushing automated decision-making, and promoting homogenized content produced by large language models.
Human rights are a shared project of humanity that is in serious danger today. From the outset, the encyclical contrasts the construction of the Tower of Babel, an arrogant and disastrous undertaking, with the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, a collective effort, guided be Nehemiah, in which each person had a part to play (paras. 7–10). The encyclical draws clear analogies between the technocentric race led by a few powerful actors and the potential approach humanity should take to digital development that is beneficial for present and future generations.
Unfortunately, it must be acknowledged that we have thus far failed to regulate artificial intelligence properly and to keep human rights at the center of human systems. Even the EU Artificial Intelligence Act—the regulation that is most consistently based on human rights and most stringently approaches the obligations of AI developers and owners—retreats in an unequal battle with technological power as shown, for example, by the recently delayed application of certain strict rules on high-risk AI systems.
However, hope for magnificent humanity is not lost. To capture new human needs and interests implicated by the use of technologies, we must extend human rights protections. As Mathias Risse rightly points out, we can start by introducing an immediately achievable, more specific set of international commitments including mandatory AI incident reporting, prohibitions on selected AI uses, and funding to build AI governance capacity fairly. At the same time, we need an honest and comprehensive view of a world full of advanced artificial systems. While much has been said about how AI affects human rights, both overtly and covertly, the encyclical seems to be the first time such a comprehensive view has been expressed by such an authoritative public figure and a religious leader.
We have yet to see whether the Pope and the Catholic Church will succeed in insisting on integral human development, an anthropological vision of technological progress, and cultivation of a healthy realism so that more people become “weavers of hope” in our world (para. 245). Still, Pope Leo’s first encyclical provides not only inspiration and a call to action but also step-by-step guidance on how to act. This is why Magnifica Humanitas can be seen not simply as a claim but as a holistic strategy for resisting the prevalence of the technocentric paradigm and the deployment of AI under conditions of private technological power hegemony.