By David Stephen
There is a recent [May 28, 2026] report on National Catholic Reporter, Pope Leo calls to ‘disarm’ AI in major document, warns of technologic threats to humanity, stating that, “With the most authoritative document yet of his still-young pontificate, Pope Leo XIV directed the Catholic Church’s moral gaze toward the frantic pace of technological development that threatens human solidarity. With AI as its entry point, Leo used his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence, to articulate the church’s position on a wide range of contemporary crises, including war, modern slavery, wealth inequality, the erosion of democracy and the devaluing of human capacities.”
“Leo takes aim not at a particular type of AI, but instead explores the effects of technologies that “merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence” and draws a distinction between human beings and machines.”
“So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean,” Leo writes.”
“The encyclical, among the most authoritative forms of papal teaching, was presented at the Vatican on May 25 during an event featuring testimony from the pope himself, prominent cardinals and theologians, and a co-founder of the AI company Anthropic, Christopher Olah, who leads its interpretability team.”
Human Intelligence
In the 1980s, in the United States, there was a campaign of “just say no” to illegal drugs. The approach, almost like a friendly partition to the “war on drugs” came with the assumption that what it may also take to reject drug use is [simply] will.
It likely worked for a lot of people, to stay away and reject it, but both the niche campaign and the larger “war on drugs” largely failed. Even though there were lots of “victories”, the refusal to address the root cause or at least understand the source made the campaign mostly impaired.
Like, why do people get addicted to drugs? Hint: it is simply not dopamine or reward system or whatever the simple explanation is. Like if it was dopamine or just the reward circuit, it should be possible to inhibit receptors there, maybe, or whatever, but such direction has not been a viable approach to stopping addiction to everything, so to speak.
Now, it indicates that it is important to look at drug or whatever other addiction [gambling, social media, and so forth], as mind problems, not just the trigger or substance problem alone. This means that what is the human mind, as a whole? How does it work? What makes it vulnerable to things that that have addictive capabilities? What is the possibility for mitigation? How can the mind be displayed to show users, and then prospect better willpower?
These are primary questions on what to do, effectively against the demand that drives drug addiction. Not simply, just say no, or some supply war, or kingpin strategy, or whatever else.
Already, artificial intelligence has kicked off, the mistake of social media, video games, sports betting or drug addiction should not be repeated. While it is also important to increase friction and taper ease of access or raise barrier to continuity, the most important goal will be to solve for human intelligence.
Till date, around the world some people find math hard. Some find programming difficult. Some people hate studying except mandated by exams. Some are not just digitally-savvy, some people prefer doing things than academic-type learning.
There are all kinds of situations with academic and professional experiences that makes it important to be asking the question so seriously, what exactly is human intelligence in the brain?
How does it work? What are the types? What are the mechanisms for problem-solving? Are they different from memorization or from basic understanding? Why is it easier to watch a movie than to watch some technical lecture or documentary?
These are not AI problems — at least. They are serious questions that humanity had not asked for decades. Now, because of disparities in choices that human intelligence places on people, competition [by contemporary economic value] seems to select for those with advantages in some areas of human intelligence, leaving others behind.
Also, with population, economic, and geographic adjustments, it is general tougher for many to get by, as opposed to what would have been obtainable years ago. This means that just among humans, solving for human intelligence is a way to drive [improved] fairness to society, reshape learning methods, give chances for training and diversify skill demands.
However, it never seemed to be real, until artificial intelligence pulled in. Someone who was not able to learn coding due to the [lack of interest or] difficulty may not be able to compete with artificial intelligence that can produce thousands of lines of codes, in minutes. The same for math or say anatomy, law, engineering or economics and so forth.
Human intelligence that is not as naturally capable will not suddenly be valued, if there is a task and AI can do it but there is now some branding for human intelligence, or dignity or magnificence. Human intelligence that would always need to get a start on subjects, and learn gradually, already would meet artificial intelligence at maturity on most tasks.
Also, even for those that can code, AI is faster, [less] fatigued, and so forth. While there are often chatters of slop — for a team that was supposed to have a lot more engineers — the possibility that AI can add value, means that some people may no longer be necessary.
The same applies to business development, aspects of medical science, law, engineering, economics and so forth. This says that the primary question of what human intelligence is, how it works and so forth are incredibly vital.
This is the primary concern of whoever really cares about humanity at this time. There is no anti-AI mission, objective or whatever that can crown human intelligence, if it is incapable of certain tasks of valuable social and productivity purposes in the forte of AI.
So, Pope Leo XIV and all Catholic Universities should be in a haste to found the first human intelligence research lab on earth.
The mission would be the most important in the history of humanity, to know what makes humans magnificent and then look out for ways to optimize it against the unstoppable and restless rise of artificial intelligence.
Human Intelligence Research Lab
The Catholic Church is mighty enough to power and have several human intelligence research labs across the world. There are lots of Catholic associated Universities that can originate and subsume this with their campuses.
The purpose will be to find out ways to make human intelligence be able to fight against artificial intelligence, such that it is possible to not need it and be able to do well.
Already, digital has infused most processes, so AI is on top of anything digital. Meanwhile, social media continues to lead how several people get information and have fun, with ease and succinct contents that makes learning that is too stressful or lengthy less captivating.
This means that there is a need to seek out the key origin, human intelligence, asking questions, even conceptually to derive state-of-the-art answers.
This is what Pope Leo XIV may have also focused on, and ignored Anthropic.
Anthropic does not care about human intelligence. Anthropic has not done anything to improve human intelligence. For all the ways that Anthropic’s Claude is getting better, deployed and so forth, human intelligence, directly or indirectly is getting replaced.
So, all that it may mean that Anthropic has good AI, matters alone for their earnings and maybe perception but they do nothing to steer humanity in the direction of strength against an alien intelligence.
Anthropic failed so badly that they should not be anywhere near Pope Leo XIV. Whoever or whatever may have arranged that really is trying to bring shame to the Church. Why did they not disclose they were raising capital, which just days later [May 28, 2026] they announced “Anthropic raises $65B in Series H funding at $965B post-money valuation”. It almost appears like human intelligence is hopeless, that there is no need to support those that maybe low-skilled or unskilled, instead to move on to artificial intelligence.
Also, even if Anthropic’s AI is 100% safe, how does that solve the unknown of human intelligence? How does it strengthen human intelligence? How does it shape the future for humanity?
Pope Leo XIV and any Catholic University can do better than Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon or others, by having the first human intelligence research lab on earth, which can be predicted on the postulation in Conceptual Biomarkers and Theoretical Biological Factors for Psychiatric and Intelligence Nosology.
Whatever is done for AI belongs to AI. Improving AI with the pretext to benefit human intelligence is a fallacy.
There is a recent [May 27, 2026] blog by Microsoft Research, Extending Human Intelligence Through AI, stating that, “The question, then, is not whether AI will replace human intelligence. It is how we can responsibly build systems that extend human understanding while remaining grounded in the world from which that understanding arises. If we mistake AI systems for autonomous minds, we risk over-trusting them. If we dismiss them as trivial tricks, we risk overlooking one of the most important technological developments of our time. A more grounded interpretation recognizes both truths at once: AI is a genuine extension of human intelligence—and precisely because of that, humans remain responsible for how it is understood, governed, and used.”
There is a new [May 30, 2026] analysis in The Guardian, Anthropic’s alliance with pope on AI harms: all in good faith or ‘Vatican-washing?’, stating that, “Why did Anthropic’s founder sit beside the pope during a warning about AI?”
“In the first major written teaching of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV took artificial intelligence to task. The pontiff delineated the technology’s most concerning threats to humanity: replacing workers, accelerating war and exploiting the environment. At a ceremony honoring the holy teaching the day of its release at the Vatican, the pope was flanked by an unusual guest speaker: Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, one of the people behind the AI boom so worrying Leo.”
“Olah’s presence raises a key question: how could the Catholic church and the world’s most valuable AI startup work together, when Anthropic’s technology may bring about the future Leo is warning against?”
“All of these companies are building technology that … is designed to replace people,” Furlong says. “That’s very much at odds with the pope’s words. You can’t have dignity in a world where you’re building technology to replace people.”