{"id":32,"date":"2026-11-01T18:16:01","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T18:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/01\/magnifica-humanitas-what-leo-xivs-encyclical-tells-the-builders-of-intelligences\/"},"modified":"2026-11-04T17:44:43","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T17:44:43","slug":"magnifica-humanitas-what-leo-xivs-encyclical-tells-the-builders-of-intelligences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/01\/magnifica-humanitas-what-leo-xivs-encyclical-tells-the-builders-of-intelligences\/","title":{"rendered":"Magnifica Humanitas: what Leo XIV’s encyclical tells the builders of intelligences"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 15 May 2026, 135 years after Rerum novarum<\/em>, Pope Leo XIV published the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas<\/em>, \u00ab\u00a0on the protection of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence\u00a0\u00bb. I read it as an engineer, as an African entrepreneur and as the author of Les B\u00e2tisseurs d’Intelligences<\/em>. Here is what I take from it. Quotations below are my own translations from the French edition.<\/p>\n

Babel or Jerusalem<\/h2>\n

The text opens with two images. Babel, the tower built in pride, with \u00ab\u00a0one language, one technology, one direction\u00a0\u00bb. And Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, where each family is given a section of wall. For the Pope, the real choice is not between \u00ab\u00a0yes\u00a0\u00bb and \u00ab\u00a0no\u00a0\u00bb to technology, but between these two ways of building (\u00a7 9).<\/p>\n

This image speaks to Africa. The Babel model is an intelligence designed elsewhere, in a single language, imposed on all. The Nehemiah model is a building site where everyone lays a stone: our languages, our data, our talent.<\/p>\n

Data as a common good<\/h2>\n

The passage that struck me most extends the universal destination of goods to \u00ab\u00a0patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure, data\u00a0\u00bb (\u00a7 67). The Pope writes that ownership of data \u00ab\u00a0cannot be left solely to private actors\u00a0\u00bb and that data is \u00ab\u00a0the fruit of the contribution of many\u00a0\u00bb (\u00a7 108). That is exactly the first principle of our Manifesto: data sovereignty.<\/p>\n

The geographies of power<\/h2>\n

In \u00a7 109, the encyclical asks us to question \u00ab\u00a0the geographies of power that determine who can train models and who is merely the object of training\u00a0\u00bb, and to recognise \u00ab\u00a0the invisible, often exploited labour that feeds algorithmic models\u00a0\u00bb. I could not have summed up Africa’s situation better: we supply the minerals, the annotators and the data, and we capture almost none of the value.<\/p>\n

Disarming AI<\/h2>\n

The Pope uses a strong word: to \u00ab\u00a0disarm\u00a0\u00bb AI, that is, to take it away from monopolies and make it \u00ab\u00a0open to debate, open to challenge, and therefore habitable\u00a0\u00bb (\u00a7 110). He also refuses to let a handful of people decide the morality of machines on their own (\u00a7 107), and insists that no decision on credit, employment or access to services should be left to an algorithm that nobody answers for (\u00a7 102-105).<\/p>\n

What it means for our projects<\/h2>\n
    \n
  • In banking and insurance<\/strong>, every decision made by an AI agent must remain traceable, explainable and open to challenge. That is the core of our CIMA and COBAC certifications.<\/li>\n
  • In model architecture<\/strong>, open protocols such as Ankh AI can turn AI production into a shared building site, where those who provide compute, talent and data receive their share.<\/li>\n
  • In public policy<\/strong>, the call for collective discernment and subsidiarity matches our demand for national AI strategies with real budgets.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Believer or not, every builder of intelligences will gain from reading this text. It recalls something the technology race makes us forget: the quality of a civilisation \u00ab\u00a0is not measured by the power of its means\u00a0\u00bb (\u00a7 114).<\/p>\n

    The full text of the encyclical is available on the Holy See’s website, vatican.va.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Data as a common good, geographies of power, AI to be disarmed: my commentary on the 15 May 2026 encyclical on the human person in the age of AI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_bluesky_share_type":"","_mastodon_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"","timeOption":"","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":""},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91,"href":"https:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/91"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tampolla.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}