Pope Leo XIV has issued an encyclical letter on how we should think about AI, and what we should do about it.

The 42,000-word document, entitled Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, can be summarized in just a few words:

Remember to be nice to one another.

Sure, there are lots of references to “responsibility,” “social justice,” and “human dignity,” but it provides no specific or morally binding course of action for people or institutions to follow. The document spends a lot of time referencing all the things we humans do right, along with our propensity to do things wrong, and finds numerous Scriptural references to make the case that God expects and encourages us to do more of the former and less of the latter.

In fact, the Pope sees our current situation as pretty messed up by the technologies we’re already using, but provides this hopeful declaration:

…but men and women [should be] prepared to enter the construction sites of history — research laboratories, technology companies, schools, the media, institutions and local communities — in order to rebuild what has collapsed and protect what is threatened.

I couldn’t agree more, but unfortunately his argument couldn’t accomplish less.

It would have been much more powerful and memorable had he taken a stand on whether or not AI will ever be conscious or possess a soul; he doesn’t, which leaves the question lurking behind every statement he makes about why we humans are so magnificent. Arguing for special privileges for us if we’re just biological versions of machines kinda feels incomplete.

The closest he comes to taking a stand is in section [99], in which he describes the current limitations of AI (with an oddly limited argument) and makes no comment on whether they are prohibitive of it becoming something more (and/or whether we’ll be able to tell the difference).

It’s also less compelling, because his argument frames AI as another technology — albeit a powerful one — that is ours to ultimately control and thereby use wisely or poorly. But AI isn’t like nuclear bombs or the effluence produced by our cars and factories, which are “dumb” and exist within the realm of things that can be controlled by our decisions. This doesn’t hold true for AI, which is and will always be better, faster, more (or differently) knowledgable, and often be so autonomously. It uses us as much as we use it.

And who are the “we” he’s talking about? He says we need to protect jobs (or find work for those rendered obsolete by AI) and make sure it doesn’t enrich just a handful of people, but who is going to do anything about it? I don’t have the power to do it, nor do you, so his encouragement that we be nice to one another is, well, a nice thing, but it won’t keep an employer from replacing staff with smart machines, or keep companies and governments from using AI to take more responsible for managing our economic and social interactions more broadly.

This is the crux of the problem: They have no incentive to do so.

I would have liked to see some good ‘ol fashioned fire and brimstone here…attach some consequences to acting in bad faith when it comes to building and implementing AI. Right now, most AI developers and implementers shrug when challenged on the morality of their visions or details of their specific actions. An AI that does fails at doing something? A technical glitch. AI that changes how we interact and see ourselves? It’ll always be too soon to make a judgement on that, so wait for the next white paper.

An AI that throws people out of work? Actually, that’s a good thing.

If AI has the potential to do bad things, which the Pope outlines, where’s the threat of eternal damnation?

The encyclical letter is filled with all the things that we should do. It would have been much more impactful had it declared why we must do them, and what the binding consequences will be if we don’t.

So far, nothing created by governments or the AI industry has done one damn thing to constrain development with manageable and enforceable guidelines. Affirming the presence of a truly “higher order” that was inescapably present and therefore unavoidable might have been the final recourse available to defend the magnificence of our humanity.

Instead, we’ll have to wait to see if any of the AI tech bros get to heaven. And whether or not any chatbots will be there, too.

In the meantime, be nicer.