All moments are historic, and the one we are living is even more radical because it transforms the way we work, relate, learn, and even how we live. We are seeing that many things that until now were only done by humans are now done by machines controlled by unknown hands that can condition people's decisions.
In this context, the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas of Pope Leo XIV proposes a profound reflection on technological progress that affects the very nature of the person. The document does not renounce technology but warns of the domination over humans that groups of multimillionaire oligarchs are perpetrating against the attributes of the dignity of persons.
Criticism of big tech is one of the harshest passages because it warns that they have a power that is not neutral and can make a distorted vision of reality desirable. But the encyclical of Pope Leo goes much further and is a challenge to disarm the power of those who can trample the inalienable dignity of the person, the common good, the universal destination of goods, solidarity, and social justice. It is a cry to combat the rampant inequalities that policies based on business and force are producing in so many countries, rich and poor, more educated or less prepared.
When President Clinton said last century that the internet had been the most important scientific contribution of the United States to the transformation of the world, he could not imagine how far we would go in the first quarter of the current century. Technology has already automated mainly physical tasks but also intellectual ones.
This change is profoundly altering the labor world, where millions of jobs will be amortized by machines, although in a relatively short time many others will be created in a new technological parameter. In this process, the pope recalls, jobs cannot be destroyed capriciously without preparing the protection of those whom AI has taken their work from.
The encyclical is a guideline that will mark political and social debate throughout the Western world, regardless of the beliefs and partisan positions of citizens. Robots and algorithms are replacing human processes.
However, history shows that every scientific or social revolution also creates new opportunities. AI is generating new professional profiles related to algorithm supervision, digital security, and the development of intelligent systems. It also increases the value of professions that are difficult to replace, such as teachers, healthcare workers, psychologists, caregivers, or any job based on empathy, human contact, and trust. The future seems to point toward a hybrid model where people will not be completely replaced, but they will increasingly work with the assistance of artificial intelligence. This change provokes new questions such as the ability to distinguish the authentic from the artificial. The world is experiencing a crisis of truth in which public trust is put at risk and opinions or democratic processes can be manipulated.
The Pope uses the powerful biblical metaphor of the Tower of Babel, which would signify the construction of a colossal project with pride and without ethics that would end up confusing the peoples. He speaks out very strongly against war, saying that no algorithm can make war morally acceptable. There is no just war, he says clearly, rectifying some points in which historically the Church has accepted just war. He also asks for forgiveness for the position on slavery that the Church may have practiced in other times.
It is unlikely that President Trump will read and even less accept Pope Leo's message about war, violence, the dignity of people, and the inequalities that are justified by force or money. The pope's reflections go against the ideas that Trump implements with doses of selfishness unknown in an American president.
In a quick reading of the document, fundamental debates arise, such as the issue of transhumanism in which some technological sectors advocate a progressive fusion between humans and machines to increase physical or mental capacities, with the idea that technology can overcome biological limits and correct people's fragility. It is the illusion, says Magnifica Humanitas, of an artificial mechanism that promises to free us from all fragility. The danger is creating a society divided between technologically superior people and excluded people, which would reinforce social and economic inequalities.
It is not about stopping progress but about deciding what kind of civilization we want to build with the clear idea that the human being must occupy the center. It is a document especially useful for the youth who will live the unsuspected transformations that are arriving and will arrive without asking permission.
