Simon Willison shares highlights from Pope Leo XIV's encyclical 'Magnifica Humanitas,' a Vatican document on AI ethics and its impact on human dignity. The Pope, who chose his name in reference to Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical on labor during the industrial revolution, frames AI as a comparable societal challenge. Key themes include the interpretability problem of LLMs (systems that are 'cultivated' rather than built), cultural bias and sycophancy in AI outputs, environmental costs of large models, risks of algorithmic decision-making without human compassion, accountability gaps, and AI's tendency to amplify existing power imbalances. The document also argues that data should be treated as a public good rather than private property. Willison also notes this fulfills a lighthearted 2026 prediction he made on a podcast about the Pope weighing in on LLMs.
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