Despite a lack of regulation, we still have the ability to steer artificial intelligence in ways that can benefit our common humanity.

Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical on artificial intelligence includes a statement that warrants serious attention from technologists and policymakers: “Technology is never neutral.” The encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, is a clarion call to all people to act with courage and solidarity as we enter an age already being transformed by artificial intelligence. As the pope says, the choice before us—the choice AI presents—is one between the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of our common humanity.

In the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, humans sought to build a massive structure that reached all the way to Heaven, only to have their project thwarted when God made those involved unable to understand one another. It was a pursuit fixated on relentless growth, divorced from any concern about God’s commandments or the human cost. The Book of Nehemiah, however, offers a contrasting narrative, in which the rebuilding of Jerusalem after a period of violence and displacement becomes an opportunity for humanity to show its collaborative resilience.

Is there any question which road we are currently barreling down? And can there be any doubt which we would do well to walk together?

We are both Catholics, members of religious communities and longtime advocates within the movement for socially responsible investment. Of particular interest to us and that movement is Pope Leo’s point that AI is not some force of nature or hyperrational, ineffable entity. Instead, he reminds us, AI is ultimately another commercial product, one emerging at a point in history when excessive power over commerce and the wider society has amassed in a vanishingly small number of hands.