The Catholic principle guiding popes through tech upheavals, from the Industrial Revolution to AI

Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical addresses artificial intelligence through a principle called "subsidiarity"—the idea that decisions should be made by those most directly affected by them. According to The Conversation, this principle has guided the Church's response to technological upheavals for nearly a century, developed during the Industrial Revolution when Pope Pius XI worried that unchecked capitalism threatened human flourishing. Today, the pope applies the same reasoning to AI: instead of allowing a handful of tech companies to control platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini as proprietary black boxes, he argues AI should be developed with transparency, accountability, and participation from everyday users, nonprofits, and governments. Practical applications could include open source alternatives that give people control over the technology, or training methods using public data instead of pervasive user monitoring.

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