In May 2026, in his first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas – signed on the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum – Pope Leo XIV warned the world about the dangers of the promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), categorically calling machine learning “a form of statistical adaptation based on data and feedback, which can be very effective, but does not imply inner growth”. Critical of an AI that replaces religious pluralism with a technological monolith, Pope Leo XIV addresses one of the most interesting dynamics of our contemporary societies: what role can religion play in a world in which technology seems to have a spiritual project of its own?
This “spiritual” AI is, in many ways, the Tower of Babel that the Pope fears. It comes with one concrete future and a defined goal, and has taken different names and ideologies, ranging from Peter Thiel’s doomsday scenario with the coming of the Antichrist, to transhumanist and techno-optimistic visions in which society is materially satisfied and markets run free.
These ideologies share one thing in common, which connects AI to some forms of organised religion in remarkable ways: messianism.
To be very clear, many other social projects have borrowed certain aspects of the same religious dimension to foster legitimacy and large-scale adoption, often with good intentions.
As Joseph Weiler well observed, Robert Schuman’s project for a “Europe of many peoples” was in itself a messianic promise, the dream of a ‘European Promised Land’. The same could be said of American Constitutionalism and its ‘constitutional faith’, as Levinson would put it, and the quasi-religious role of the founding fathers, the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence.
Political messianism has the potential to unite a people around a particular goal, focusing our attention more on the end goal and less on the journey, especially when that journey is fraught with peril and suffering. However, there seems to be something entirely new about AI messianism.
First, the entire project of general AI is, in itself, ultimately that of achieving human intelligence. Unlike other technological advancements of the past – such as harvesting electricity or fire – AI seeks, at the core of its scientific foundations, to replicate Humankind and, perhaps one day, to surpass it.
Tests like the famous Turing Test were precisely designed to see how far a machine could go in convincing humans that it was one of them. Leonardo Da Vinci painfully discovered how such an imitation game could trigger a negative reaction from humans themselves, namely when he (allegedly) presented humanity’s first “robot” before the Sforza’s court, much to the horror and wonder of the guests. This is not so different from the reaction we have today, almost instinctively, when we gasp at how Claude writes a poem or Python code.
Secondly, technology brings about a particular Messiah. There is a concept in AI studies that once belonged solely to sci-fi books and is now making its way into everyday news. The concept of Artificial General Intelligence or AGI, or even Superintelligence, is ultimately that of
Kurzweil’s “Singularity”, a moment in which human intelligence is no longer the most capable on Earth. This AGI is the Messiah who shall cure Earth from all illness (as Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis tells us again and again). To follow this Messiah becomes then our mission, our religious quest, no matter what the cost is to the environment or to ourselves. When Andreessen says that “our enemy is the Precautionary Principle, which would have prevented virtually all progress since man first harnessed fire”, it’s a call for action to push quicker and farther, as far as we can, to follow it. The Singularity is ultimately God, with AI as its Son, and this new machine-led Earth as our Promised Land.
Now, one could ask: Is it not a bit bizarre to frame technology in this way? Who is to gain from such a messianic view of technology?
In political messianism, it is fairly easy to understand its appeal. It provides a guiding goal, it unites a people, and rallies the masses to fight for a common ideal or cause. It can also manipulate them to do terrible things. People die for a country because they wish to contribute to something long-lasting, bigger than themselves, to achieve some ultimate goal. But they also do it to follow a leader, often to the destruction of minorities. Likewise, religious messianism serves a purpose for the faithful: orienting behaviour, providing solace in a difficult life, promising that the future will be better than the present once in eternal life.
To some extent, the Catholic Church itself largely benefited from such an idea and so did early Christianity during its infancy, in appealing to the poor of the Roman Empire. It also led to enormous suffering when it justified atrocities in the name of God.
But technology should not really be about that, especially when most tech-optimists advocate for the wonders of technology neutrality as a value of the project itself.
The answer lies perhaps in the Pope’s acknowledgment that “When it comes to decisions regarding economic flows and digital platforms, as well as the governance of data and algorithms, we cannot allow a handful of actors to dictate these processes on their own.” The point is then a matter of power and control, positions in which messianism can be used for the same political ends of manipulation and exploitation (e.g. you will not be replaced by AI, but by someone who uses AI). These, in turn, lead to further uncritical adoption and a continuous race toward the unknown end. This monocultural race, in which we assume the path to be one and the final destination to be certain, is precisely one of the known dangers of messianism.
In fact, this might be the ultimate hidden goal of AI messianism, which has long strayed from its counterculture goals to now present a monocultural ideology of technology, led by the US and China, to which the rest of the world should bow or face oblivion.
Like any good old messianic project, it is never the entire story. There are alternatives to the path – multiple in fact – from alternative clouds to alternative social media solutions, from alternative Large Language Models (LLMs) to alternative cyber communities, each following its own path, sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing, but never submitting to one singular religious vision of what the world should be.
Today is perhaps the moment to exercise some caution, take some time to reflect, and engage in some critical thinking.
AI is, no doubt, an enormous and potentially civilisation-changing achievement, but we cannot let it lead us on a cultish journey toward our own demise – not because it takes over, but because we destroy ourselves and our humanity in the process.
What is needed is what Michael Walzer called the “art of separation” in Liberalism: keeping technology one sphere among many, rather than a totalising one that colonises politics, faith, and meaning itself.
Perhaps pluralism, more than one single vision of technological advancement, is the counter-theology we need today.
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