What the pope's encyclical on AI might mean for higher education

Pope Leo XIV signs his new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. Credit: Vatican Media

On May 25, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, subtitled “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” Presenting it alongside Chris Olah, the 33 year-old co-founder of the American AI company Anthropic, the Chicago-born pope offered the Church’s history of reflection on social questions as a “shared discernment,” connecting it to his predecessor and namesake, Pope Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum was a pioneering commentary on the first industrial revolution. Today, during the fourth industrial revolution, Leo writes, what is needed is a collaboration among governments, industries, citizens, intermediary organizations, and educators who can address the significant challenges related to AI.

Olah, in his remarks at the release of the encyclical, pointed to the reasons why he saw Pope Leo as an ally. To my knowledge, his presence at the event represented the first time a leader of industry approached the Vatican to invite cooperation on a matter of social concern. Effectively, his message was that the AI industry needed an outside voice—one with no national, corporate, or other political or financial interest—to referee what’s happening between human beings and their technologies. The questions raised by AI, he observed, were bigger than those within the industry could properly address: questions for “the humanities, for religion, for philosophy, for society at large.” In his brief remarks, he used the same word four times that figures so prominently in the encyclical—discernment—calling on communities, civil society, scholars, and governments to take up this shared task.

Together, both Olah and Pope Leo raise questions about the ways that colleges and universities today are structured for the sake of shared discernment of a global common good. Built as they are on two models, emphasizing (respectively) research and education, colleges and universities (certainly in the United States, but increasingly around the world) face existential challenges in reconciling exactly what it is they are supposed to be doing. The encyclical, I argue, offers a compass point.

Two models of the university were articulated in 1963, when Clark Kerr, president of the University of California, published the first of many editions of his landmark book The Uses of the University. He contrasted his model with that of John Henry Newman in his seminal Idea of a University (1852). Kerr’s first model drew from the work of Abraham Flexner, whose studies in comparative education at the University of Berlin (today, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) persuaded him of the need for an American university model dedicated strictly to research. Flexner eventually founded the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a kind of intellectual utopia that became the home for Albert Einstein and many other distinguished researchers. Kerr lauded this model of “an institution consciously devoted to the pursuit of knowledge, the solution of problems, the critical appreciation of achievement and the training of men at a really high level,” even as he gazed nostalgically at the humanistic model of integrated liberal arts education offered by Newman. But what he described in his day was a new reality which superseded both of these models: the multiversity, “an imperative rather than a reasoned choice among elegant alternatives.” Unlike the intellectual utopia of Flexner and the academic cloister of Newman, which emphasized the intellectual and moral formation of undergraduates, the multiversity has emerged as the de facto model of much of university life: the shopping mall of disciplines and classes where students consume, in search of employment, and where scholar/entrepreneurs sell their thinking, in search of personal branding.

That model is insufficient to address the scale of social challenges today. What Leo proposes in his encyclical—reflecting his call for a shared discernment—is a model of the university built upon the foundation of the humanities, but with a superstructure that offers paths for pioneering work related to AI. An education devoid of training in the humanistic disciplines leads to technical mastery and discovery, failing to equip researchers with the intellectual and moral habits needed to ask “why are we building these things?” Leo likens this model to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel (paragraphs 1, 7, 9, 10, 16, 90, 129-130, 184-185), in which the effort “sacrifices human dignity for efficiency” (7). By contrast, the story of Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem following the Babylonian exile (8, 10, 16, 90, 129, 184, 241-242) offers a model of shared discernment, the model needed today. Nehemiah is a model of humility, careful listening, collaboration, and subsidiarity (letting solutions be carried out by individuals and groups rather than higher-level authorities), keeping in mind the shared human good as the focus of his efforts.

The specific invitation that Leo issues to educators is for “an educational alliance for the digital age” (139-142), with a particular invitation to institutions (143-147), to consider how they are preparing students for their role in constructing the global order emerging in the AI age. Broadly, the pope is concerned about how AI is shaping both the world that young people live in now, as well as the societies in which they will live, build relationships, and work. Most fundamentally, his focus is on safeguarding human dignity and human rights in the face of serious challenges already emerging in the AI age.

The words “discern” or “discernment” show up in the encyclical 32 times, emphasizing the need for cooperation among scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs, workers, educators, legislators, popular movements, and faith communities (13). The particular context in which this shared discernment must unfold is one in which AI is presenting challenges for communication: he observes that in “an era when truth is often distorted in order to serve particular interests and communication strategies, the field of education assumes decisive importance” (139). Needed, then, are the cultivation of intellectual habits among students, since (citing Plato’s Letter VII), education requires patience and the kind of slow, interpersonal work that enable students to catch the spark of learning after much time and effort. He expresses concerns for the kinds of dangers that parents today express regularly in op-eds and in school committee meetings: impacts on sleep and attention span; influences of porn and sexual exploitation; concerns about cyberbullying and addiction (142). Schools, he writes, can help young people develop habits and shape their desires in ways that promote their flourishing.

These reflections reflect the kind of personal formation that is at the heart of Newman’s model of the university as the training-ground for future citizens of the good society. Yet Leo does not stop at this model (and neither, it should be noted, did Newman), but goes on to call for attention to the broader challenges of social life, work, and research. In the face of the incessant flow of information, research remains an “essential exercise” (146), even as it calls for the need to grasp reality as a whole, and ask profound questions about meaning. There are larger structural questions that call for the best thinking: questions about how to judge a society’s wellbeing that are more expansive than GDP (163); questions about relations between nations and avoidance of war (importantly, describing the Church’s own just war tradition as obsolete in paragraph 192); questions about modern slavery, including repentance for the Church’s inadequate response to it in centuries past (176). In perhaps his most Augustinian move (Leo being a member of the Order of Saint Augustine), he proposes two models of civilization, one rooted in love and the other rooted in power. Educators, he writes, have a special responsibility, and offer “one of the most valuable services to the common good” (238) in teaching new generations to be part of the shared discernment in the face of technological evolution.

Ultimately, the document reads, among other things, as a call for shared discernment among educators. If colleges and universities are to contribute to a good emerging global order, they must root themselves in the humanistic learning that enables all students to keep their eye on big questions about what it means to flourish as individuals and societies. But they also must promote the most rigorous research to guide the development of technologies that truly serve the human good. This call includes rethinking the physical spaces where education happens (might this mean ensuring mathematicians and philosophers are having lunch together?), as well as evaluation methods (in my read, especially having to do with writing) and the very role of flesh-and-blood teachers (145). It is difficult to imagine how societies will progress unless educators take seriously the kind of invitation Leo issues: the fundamental need to work together.