Pope Leo XIV asks the AI industry to 'cultivate moral discernment' (www.businessinsider.com)

Pope Leo XIV publicly urged AI leaders to “cultivate moral discernment,” asking builders to design systems that embody justice, solidarity and a “reverence for life.” In an X post and a message to the Builders AI Forum 2025 — following his May address to the College of Cardinals — the new pope framed technological innovation as ethically and spiritually weighted, arguing that design choices express a vision of humanity. He called for AI work to extend beyond labs and markets into an “ecclesial endeavor,” citing use cases like algorithms for Catholic education, compassionate healthcare tools, and creative platforms that communicate faith with truth and beauty. For the AI/ML community this is a high-profile moral nudge toward value-driven engineering and governance. Practically, it reinforces priorities already central to alignment research: bias mitigation, human oversight, impact assessments, safety protocols, and domain-specific constraints (education, healthcare, content moderation). It may also influence partnerships, funding streams, and standards in institutions aligned with Catholic social teaching. By framing AI as an ethical and spiritual enterprise, the pope amplifies calls for developers to embed human dignity, labor protections, and solidarity into model objectives and deployment practices rather than treating speed-to-market as the sole metric of success.