It’s not often that policymaking in Brussels gives off an aura of divine providence.
But that’s the way it felt this week, after His Holiness Pope Leo XIV dropped a papal encyclical on artificial intelligence. The 42,300 word document advocated for a “human-centered, relational vision” for AI that involved more government regulation, protection for workers and safeguards to ensure that humans stay in control of AI-powered weapons.
The European Commission was eager to take the Pope’s document and major speech in Vatican City on Monday as a victory. At the midday briefing on Tuesday, Thomas Regnier, the Commission’s spokesperson for tech sovereignty, said that “we could not agree more with the vision of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV and the need for a robust legal framework for AI…what the Pope describes is what Europe is already doing.”
The Pope’s pronouncement was received differently in the United States, where tech leaders in Silicon Valley largely dismissed it as being out of touch with the AI frontier. “Bad take from the Pope,” as one CEO of an aerospace tech company put it. Meanwhile, Trump’s former AI czar questioned the wisdom of giving governments more power over regulating the technology.
But those reactions risk missing the bigger picture. Pope Leo’s reflections on AI and the Commission’s quick embrace of the document shows how two rapidly diverging poles are emerging in global AI policy.
In Silicon Valley, techno-optimists like Sam Altman and Elon Musk are racing ahead with little regard for the broader societal impacts of the technology. (An Anthropic co-founder was invited to speak at the presentation of the encyclical, pointing to a more safety conscious attitude, but the company has still refused to share its cutting-edge Mythos model with the EU.)
Meanwhile, in Europe a more human-centered approach advocated for by Pope Leo and the European Union is seeking to grapple with the difficult societal challenges AI poses.
Pope Leo “is trying to set the conversation about the need to have a rights-based governance approach, and that should be quite important to Europe, as Europe is quite aligned with that,” said Luka Ignac, the interim director for advanced AI at the Centre for Future Generations in Brussels.
But even with the holy rhetoric, the EU has recently taken steps to hobble its own landmark AI Act. Following a major industry lobbying effort, the EU institutions agreed on a framework to delay implementation of some of the bloc’s most stringent regulations and to carve industrial applications out from the law completely.
But news cycles are notoriously bad at capturing the larger picture. Leo’s encyclical and stance on stronger AI regulation will remain relevant far longer than this newsletter.
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