Pope’s AI warnings come as Americans grapple with data center expansions
Pope Leo XIV warns against building a “new Tower of Babel” in AI, urging development that protects the environment, preserves work dignity, promotes solidarity, and prevents power concentration. American companies are rapidly expanding AI data centers—over 4,000 operating and many under construction—while facing local protests over environmental impact, noise, job uncertainty, and broader AI skepticism. Surveys show strong public concern: 71% of Americans oppose local AI data centers, 50% are more worried than excited about AI, and 57% believe AI risks outweigh benefits. The Interior Secretary promotes data center expansion and dismisses the Pope’s warnings, labeling protests as foreign propaganda, while states offer extensive tax incentives to attract data centers.
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Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas warns that AI development must protect the Earth, uphold the dignity of work, foster human solidarity and avoid concentrating power, likening reckless AI projects to a new “Tower of Babel.” At the same time, U.S. communities are confronting a rapid expansion of AI‑driven data centers, sparking protests, environmental concerns and debate over economic incentives. Both articles detail how Catholic scholars, industry representatives and public opinion intersect around these issues 1 2.
The encyclical calls for AI that safeguards natural resources, respects workers and distributes benefits broadly. It references the biblical Book of Nehemiah as a model for building “walls” that protect humanity rather than towers that hubris‑driven power. Leo XIV stresses the need to prevent “overlook[ing] the environmental impact” and to keep AI development aligned with the common good 1 2.
Investigate Catholic teachings on technology and environmental stewardship
Catholic teaching treats both technology and the environment as moral questions: technology is meant to serve the human person and the common good, while environmental stewardship flows from humanity’s duty to safeguard God’s creation for future generations.
Catholic tradition does not view technology as an inevitable moral good or evil in itself. Pope Francis explicitly frames AI first as “a tool”, and insists that “the benefits or harm it will bring will depend on its use.”
Similarly, Pope Leo XIV emphasizes that human beings are called as “co-workers in the work of creation,” not passive consumers of what technology produces. He links dignity to specifically human capacities—reflection, free choice, love, and authentic relationships—and says that safeguarding what is distinctive about the human person is essential for an adequate framework for AI’s consequences.
Pope Leo XIV teaches that discernment about AI must safeguard the “primacy of the human person” so that it is human intelligence, with conscience and freedom, that guides innovation and determines use and limits.
Pope Leo XIV also warns that the danger is not limited to misuse by individuals; a broader “technocratic paradigm” can normalize an anti-human vision in which efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value and people are treated as projects to be optimized rather than persons in relationship and communion.
This aligns with Pope Francis’s insistence that AI cannot replace human judgment about human persons: he notes that delegating “the last word” to a machine for decisions affecting someone’s future risks incorporating prejudices contained in data categories, and that “a machine cannot take into account” human capacity for change.
Pope Francis highlights a deeper limit: AI may appear confident, but its methods depend on formalized numerical categories and chained calculations (algorithms). He warns that algorithms are “neither objective nor neutral,” and can only examine realities that have been rendered numerical.
That matters morally because Catholic anthropology insists that persons are not merely data points; they have dignity grounded in being human, not in computable performance.
Pope Leo XIV describes an approach beyond mere regulation: “disarming” AI means freeing it from an “armed” mentality of competitive domination (economic and cognitive), and rejecting the assumption that technical power automatically grants the right to govern. He explicitly says disarming does not mean rejecting technology; it means preventing dominance over humanity, breaking monopolistic control, and opening it to debate so it becomes human-friendly and accessible.
Pope Leo XIV stresses that AI “is never a purely technical matter.” When it enters processes affecting people’s lives, it touches rights, opportunities, status, and freedom. He also notes the risk of new exclusions when sensitive decisions are delegated to automated systems that lack compassion/mercy/forgiveness and the hope that people can change.
He further warns about “subtler” danger: AI systems can present themselves as neutral and objective while reflecting and reinforcing stereotypes or ideological bias.
Catholic teaching extends moral discernment to everyday practice: Pope Leo XIV says education about AI includes learning when and for what purpose it ought not to be used, because speed and ease can extinguish the desire to ask questions—something that bears fruit only over time.
In other words, responsible technology use is not only about policies; it is also about forming human habits of truth-seeking, patience, and restraint.
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Catholic stewardship is not merely aesthetic appreciation; it is moral responsibility toward future generations. Pope Benedict XVI teaches that creation must not be bequeathed to future generations depleted of its resources, and that humans have a legitimate duty of responsible stewardship—to protect, to enjoy, and to cultivate nature, including with the assistance of advanced technologies.
He also gives a social justice dimension: decisions about shared environmental resources must recognize costs transparently and ensure they are not pushed onto other peoples or future generations.
US Catholic bishops likewise state, in the context of climate and creation care, that protecting land, water, and air is a religious duty of stewardship and ties directly to responsibility for the most vulnerable—“born and unborn” children—who are most exposed to environmental assault.
Pope Francis identifies a common distortion in modern thought: excessive anthropocentrism that imagines protection of nature as a faint-hearted preference rather than a duty. He says Christian “dominion” over the universe should be understood properly as responsible stewardship.
So the moral center is not hostility to humans, but rejection of a false model of humanity as a controlling master who treats nature as expendable.
Pope Francis defines the environment in an integrated way: it is a relationship between nature and the society living within it; nature is not “a mere setting.” He argues that pollution cannot be understood without studying society’s economy, behaviors, and ways of grasping reality.
He concludes that there is not “two separate crises,” one environmental and the other social, but a single complex crisis that is both social and environmental; therefore strategies must be comprehensive and integrated, including combating poverty and restoring dignity to the excluded while protecting nature.
Catholic ecology also includes non-instrumental respect: Pope Francis teaches that ecosystems and each organism have an intrinsic value independent of their usefulness. He explains that sustainable use must consider each ecosystem’s regenerative ability.
This matters for technology choices too: stewardship is not only about reducing harms, but about respecting the structures by which creation sustains life.
Pope Francis’s appeal emphasizes building a “common home” through sustainable and integral development, and giving particular appreciation to those tackling environmental degradation’s effects on the poorest.
The bishops’ policy summary underscores that creation care is a moral issue requiring concrete steps like energy conservation and development of renewable, clean-energy resources, guided by prudence and the common good—especially considering the impact on the poor, vulnerable workers, and vulnerable nations.
They also stress solidarity across generations and a response to environmental degradation that uproots people, noting migrants’ vulnerability when they lack legal refugee protections under existing conventions.
A US bishops’ letter on agriculture links stewardship to a spiritual reciprocity found in a Vatican message: “as we care for creation, we realize that God, through creation, cares for us.”
That means environmental stewardship is not only technical policy; it is also formation in gratitude, responsibility, and respect.
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Pope Benedict XVI directly affirms that humans may use “advanced technologies” as assistance in protecting, enjoying, and cultivating creation—so long as the intent and governance are stewardship oriented toward feeding and dignified life while not depleting resources for future generations.
This avoids a simplistic “technology good/bad” binary. The Church’s criteria are moral: the use of technology must be integrated with justice, the common good, and respect for creation’s regenerative capacities.
Pope Francis’s integrated view means technology decisions affecting jobs, communication, consumption, and planning cannot be separated from their environmental consequences. The single complex crisis (social and environmental) requires solutions that restore dignity to the excluded and protect nature together.
Pope Leo XIV’s critique of technocracy provides a parallel warning: when efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings can be treated as optimizable objects. That same technocratic mindset can also be ecologically harmful if it reduces creation to resources for control rather than a shared home requiring stewardship.
Pope Leo XIV makes an explicit connection: he says AI disarmament is “ecological in the deepest sense, for it concerns a new dimension of our common home.” He adds that AI already functions as an environment and must be engaged so that it does not dominate humanity, with access and accessibility rather than monopolistic control.
So stewardship is not limited to forests and rivers; it also includes governance of information systems and technological power—because those systems shape how humans relate to truth, dignity, and solidarity.
Catholic teaching treats technology as morally evaluable because it is a tool whose benefits or harms depend on human use, and because AI and digital systems can threaten dignity, freedom, truth, and justice when they replace human judgment or embed bias.
Likewise, environmental stewardship is not optional: it is a duty of responsible care for creation that protects the vulnerable, respects the intrinsic value and regenerative capacity of ecosystems, and ensures environmental costs are not unjustly shifted to others or future generations.
In both domains, the Church’s consistent moral logic is stewardship: technology and ecology must serve the human person in truth and solidarity, within the limits and meaning of the created world.