Pope Leo Wants to Disarm AI. Explained.

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Pope Leo Wants to Disarm AI. Explained."

Podcast: AI For Humans: Weekly AI News, Tools & Trends
Hosts: Kevin Pereira & Gavin Purcell
Episode Date: May 26, 2026
Main Theme: The unprecedented intervention of Pope Leo in the global AI conversation via a massive encyclical, its parallels to history, what “disarm AI” means, and the evolving intersection of religion, ethics, and technology.

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Episode Overview

This episode breaks down the headline-grabbing move by Pope Leo: releasing a 42,000-word encyclical on artificial intelligence, with the memorable call to “disarm AI.” The hosts contextualize the Pope’s message, examine its historical roots, the partnership with Anthropic’s co-founder, and explore broader social, ethical, and religious ripple effects.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Pope’s Encyclical: “Magnifica Humanitarius”

• What is it?

  • The Pope’s first encyclical—a rare, authoritative letter to the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics—focused entirely on AI (00:37).
  • The title, “Magnifica Humanitarius,” means “magnificent humanity.”

• The Central Message

  • The phrase “disarm AI” (not ban it) is going viral.
  • Quote: “Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences and indicating paths forward for humanity.” (B, 01:24)

• Clarification

  • Disarming AI, according to the Pope, means not rejecting technology but “preventing it from dominating humanity." (A, 01:44)
  • Draws a parallel to the biblical Tower of Babel: cautioning that AI, like past attempts to rival the divine, could lead to unintended consequences.
    • Quote from the document: “AI systems do not feel joy or pain, do not possess a body, do not know from within what Love or friendship or responsibility mean.” (A, 01:44)

Rejection of Transhumanism and Posthumanism

• Pope Leo openly challenges ideas of merging with AI (transhumanism) or letting AI surpass human authority (posthumanism), marking a historic departure in public Catholic doctrine. (A, 02:20)
• Host Reaction: “Those are things that I never thought would come out of a Pope's mouth, but here we are.” (A, 02:28)

Historical Parallels: Pope Leo XIII and the Industrial Revolution

• Pope Leo named himself after Leo XIII, famed for the encyclical “Rerum Novarum” (1891), which addressed the disruptions of the Industrial Revolution.
  • The original Leo’s encyclical spoke out against unchecked technology and labor abuses, defending unions and fair wages.
  • Host Connection: “That encyclical looked deeply at the Industrial Revolution and talked about child labor workers being crushed by capitalism...ding, ding, ding.” (A, 03:20)
• The current Pope is purposefully echoing that moment, signaling an awareness that the AI transition is equally transformative.

The Church’s History With Technology

• The Church has often resisted technological advances (e.g., Galileo, printing press, IVF). But the labor elements of the previous encyclical aged well—shaping protections still relevant today. (A, 04:10)

Anthropic’s Chris Olah Stands With the Pope

• Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic (a safety-focused AI lab), stood by the Pope’s side during the announcement—signaling an alignment with AI caution. (A, 04:49)

  • Anthropic recently refused U.S. Department of Defense requests for unrestricted AI use, including lethal drone control; this underscores the current tension between corporate, government, and ethical interests.
  • There is some controversy: Anthropic later also signed a deal with the NSA, showing the complexities at play.

• Chris Olah’s Notable Statement:

  “I am a scientist. I lead a research team that studies the internal structure of these models, what is actually happening inside them. And I will be honest with you, we keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection, we find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease. I don't know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment.”
  — Chris Olah, (C) 06:56

Real-World Implications

• Host’s Analysis:
  • The Pope isn’t “anti-AI,” but against the unchecked “arms race” aspect—warning that unbridled acceleration could outpace human control. (A, 07:26)
  • The hosts urge listeners not to oversimplify the debate as “Pope vs. Big Tech.”
  • The encyclical is likely to shape thinking in 5,800 U.S. Catholic schools, shaping the next generation’s view on AI. (A, 08:11)
  • Anticipates other major world religious figures will respond with their own takes—leading to a global cascade of religious interventions on AI.

The Quasi-Religious Character of AI

• Hosts discuss how AI—particularly concepts like “superintelligence”—already attracts quasi-religious devotion and language.
  • Examples include Reddit’s “ChatGPT as God” communities and figures like Sam Altman sounding “like a preacher…talking about super intelligence.” (A, 09:12)
  • Caution that the boundary between humans and machines may blur, despite religious calls for separation.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• B on the encyclical’s significance:
  “Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences and indicating paths forward for humanity.” (01:24)

• A on the encyclical’s depth:
  “This Pope chose to make his first one all about AI says a lot.” (00:57)

• Chris Olah’s scientific humility:
  “We keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling… I think it warrants ongoing discernment." (06:56)

• A on historical context:
  “That encyclical looked deeply at the Industrial Revolution and talked about child labor workers being crushed by capitalism. It defended unions and fair wages. It said technology and capitalism should not run human beings.” (03:20)

• A on education’s ripple effect:
  “Catholic schools, there are 5,800 of them in the US alone…This is going to be a thing that's going to be taught to students in Catholic schools. And that alone is going to start changing people's attitudes towards a AI…” (08:11)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00–01:24: Introduction of the Pope’s dramatic intervention and the phrase “disarm AI.”
• 01:44–03:20: The Pope’s key arguments and biblical/ethical framing.
• 03:20–04:15: Historical parallels—Leo XIII, the Industrial Revolution, and labor rights.
• 04:49–06:56: Anthropic’s involvement and U.S. government controversies.
• 06:56–07:26: Chris Olah’s statement and concerns about AI’s internal complexities.
• 08:11–09:12: How the encyclical will shape education and predict wider religious responses.
• 09:12–End: Discussion of AI’s evolving quasi-religious role and future blurring of boundaries.

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Tone and Style

• The hosts maintain an accessible, conversational, and at times humorous tone, while taking the subject’s ethical gravity seriously.
• They provide clear explanations for non-experts and reference both history and pop culture to ground the discussion.

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Summary Takeaways

• Pope Leo’s encyclical marks a major turning point—both religiously and ethically—in global AI discourse.
• The call to “disarm AI” is not anti-technology, but a demand for careful, brake-on development, especially in military and surveillance contexts.
• Historical and religious perspectives are entering the AI debate on a new scale and will soon ripple through education and other world religions.
• AI’s ambiguous, possibly emergent qualities raise profound questions that science, philosophy, and religion alike are struggling to frame or answer.

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If you want the most entertaining (and thoughtful) way to stay in the loop on AI, this episode is a must-listen.

Transcript

[A]

The Pope just picked a side in the AI war and the side he picked is currently suing the US government.

[B]

Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed.

[A]

That's right. Pope Leo released a 42, 000 word document on AI and he brought on the co founder of Anthropic to discuss it.

[B]

I'd like to thank Mr. Ola for accepting our invitation. I accept your invitation to walk together, to listen and to speak, and together to find the way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence.

[A]

The headlines are seriously not capturing how big a deal this is and also kind of where it goes from here. Let's get into it. This document is called the Magnifica Humanitarius, which is Latin for magnificent humanity. More importantly, this is this Pope's first encyclical, which is one of the most important things a Pope can write. And he wrote it about AI. Just to be clear, an encyclical is a formal letter that a Pope writes to the 1.3 billion Catholics on Earth. This is something that Popes do like once or twice in their entire reign. This Pope chose to make his first one all about AI says a lot. And there's already a phrase going viral out of this disarm AI not ban it, but to disarm it.

[B]

Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences and indicating paths forward for humanity.

[A]

What Pope Leo is saying here, in his own words, is that AI is being built like a weapon right now, which you can agree with or disagree with, but again, the Pope is talking to 1.3 billion people who will pay attention to what he says. His exact quote is this. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. And then he opens up and talks about the Tower of Babel. And if you're not familiar, the Tower of Babel in the Bible is a parable where a bunch of humans get together and they decide to try to build a tower towards God. God decides this is not a great idea and smotes them across the entire earth and spreads everybody else. This is a parable for not getting too close to the divine. And the Pope here is framing AI in the exact same way. Is that good? I'm not really sure if I believe in that, but this is what is happening right now. This is again from direct, again directly from his document, he writes, AI systems do not feel joy or pain, do not possess a body, do not know from within what Love or friendship or responsibility mean. He also rejects transhumanism, idea that we are going to merge with the AIs and post humanism, which is the idea that AIs might just be better than us anyway at running the world, so just let them go wild. Those are things that I never thought would come out of a Pope's mouth, but here we are. And this is a pretty strong stance against AI accelerationism. Yes, the document is a big deal. I encourage you to read it, spend some time. It's going to take a weekend or so. But the bigger part of this is the context that this is all sitting in. First of all, this Pope did not name himself Leo by accident. This is fascinating. Pope Leo actually named himself after a former Pope leo. In fact, 135 years ago, almost to the day, Pope Leo XIII wrote another encyclical called Rerum Novarum. These are my Latin pronunciations, I apologize, which translates to on new things. And the fascinating thing is that was about the Industrial Revolution, was which a lot of people had made parallels to this AI moment in the Industrial Revolution. We saw a massive change in society where suddenly factories were where everybody went to work and machines were doing work for us. Which sounds kind of similar to the conversations that we're having right now. That encyclical looked deeply at the Industrial Revolution and talked about child labor workers being crushed by capitalism. It defended unions and fair wages. It said technology and capitalism should not run human beings. Which again, ding, ding, ding, ding. We're seeing a lot of specific parallels to the time we live in right now. So when that Pope matched with this Pope and this Pope decided to exactly call himself that Pope's name and use this encyclical to kind of call back to that encyclical. You can tell that this Pope has got his head in one specific direction. He knows this moment. He understands that this is a huge transformation. And he's really trying to tell both all the Catholics in the world and kind of the world at large, the sit up and take notice side note here. If you want a little bit of framing on this kind of anti AI movement that we're going through right now, we've talked about on the show, really go, go Google historical Luddites. And I think you hear the term Luddite, you think of this as like, oh, yeah, somebody just didn't like technology. No, this was a movement, if you're not familiar, it was a movement in the Industrial Revolution where lots of people hated technology so much that they would attack factories. That also Mirrors very closely what we're seeing with data centers. You know, they say that history doesn't always echo, but it sometimes rhymes. Somebody said that. We'll put in whoever said that. Now let us be clear. The Catholic Church does not exactly have the best history on tech. Galileo is a good example, or the printing press. These are things that the Catholic Church fought desperately against. IVF is something recently that people have struggled with how to deal with this in the Catholic Church. But the labor stuff in this old encyclical has actually aged pretty well. There was a time in the Industrial revolution where humans were just kind of cast off in the name of prophets. And a lot of what we have Today, say the 40 hour workweek and all the sort of stuff that humans feel like is part of their lives and comes out of the negative aspects of the Industrial Revolution. Let's get back to who was standing next to the Pope during this thing. This is Chris Olay. He is one of the co founders of Anthropic. And we all know that Anthropic is a human first AI company. They were formed out of OpenAI mostly because the Anthropic co founders, including Dario Mode and his sister, were unhappy with how Safety was being taken seriously or not being taken seriously at OpenAI. So you wonder, okay, well great. There's one of the co founders of one of the main AI companies up there with him. That's already a big deal. But you have to remember also, Anthropic is the company that was being sued by the Department of Defense earlier this year because they would not give carte blanche to the Department of Defense to do everything they wanted with their AI models, including running drones that could essentially take out people's lives. This Pope is now aligning himself directly with Anthropic, which has a very specific take on the future of AI and how much our governments should be allowed to use AI to do things like spy on people or attack civilians. Now, some people might say that conflict has resolved itself and that there's some hypocrisy going on because the NSA just signed a deal with Anthropic to use their models. But the Pope specifically invited Chris Olay to stand next to him during this. And Chris even gave a comment of his own. Take a listen.

[C]

I am a scientist. I lead a research team that studies the internal structure of these models, what is actually happening inside them. And I will be honest with you, we keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find Evidence of introspection, we find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease. I don't know what that means, but I think it worries on warrants ongoing discernment.

[A]

That is not a neutral move to invite an anthropic co founder up there. But I think it's important to understand that this Pope is not anti AI at least I don't think so. What he seems like he is saying here is that he is ant the AI arms race, specifically the arms part of it. Because I think if he worries that we race forward to make these systems more and more powerful, ultimately they will outpace us and outpace our control, which I guess, I mean, most of us are worried about in some way. I think a lot of people are going to try to flatten this conversation as the Pope versus big tech. And I think what the Pope is really saying here is just like, hold your horses everybody. Let's slow down and think through this before we race to the end. Now, I'm conflicted about this personally because there's lots of stuff that say if you push forward, all of the great things about AI could still come. We are just starting to see the inklings of what AI can do when it's solving these kind of crazy math problems, the Erdos problems that Both Google and OpenAI have recently solved. But I do want to get into some of the weird things that this sort of missive, this, this large 42,000 word thing can kind of do for the world right now. First of all, Catholic schools, there are 5,800 of them in the US alone. And now that the Pope has put this out, this will be taught. This is going to be a thing that's going to be taught to students in Catholic schools. And that alone is going to start changing people's attitudes towards a AI but once the Pope does something like this, other religions come next. They're all going to kind of follow on. I expect we'll see people like the Dalai Lama, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Islamic scholars, all start to have their own AI takes. And you think of there's a lot of people on YouTube having AI takes. Wait until every religious and political scholar in the world starts to drop them on us. It will be overwhelming. But I think the bigger thing that this Pope has stepped into is this kind of like quasi religious thing that we've been seeing around AI for the last few years. The idea of superintelligence. An AI that is smarter than us is alone, an idea kind of like an AI God. In fact, Sam Allman sometimes sounds like a preacher when he's talking about super intelligence or the things that it could do for us. There are whole subreddits dedicated to ChatGPT as God and other places right now, and we're already starting to feel this bubble up that the idea that the Oracle, this thing that could just answer our questions and give us advice, could become a quasi God like figure, which is going to feel really weird when your kid comes up to you in 10 years and talks to you about the Church of Chatgpt. Don't forget, before Chatgpt there was a Google engineer who quit Google literally because he felt like he was talking to an entity, to a real being. More of that is going to come. The Pope here is saying humans are humans and machines are machines, but I don't know if that's going to be the case going forward. I personally think we are going to see a lot of blurring happen. No matter what the Pope thinks, we're going to be tracking this all week long. We'll see what other things come out of this. And if you got something out of this, please hit subscribe. We do this show twice a week. Right now I'm doing a solo show, but generally it's me and my partner Kevin Pereira. We talk about AI, we cover the news, and guess what? It is not slowing down. Thanks so much for watching everybody. We'll see you next time.