The Pope on AI, and the Jevons paradox
When the Pope writes 40,000 words on AI, it is worth reading.
Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, arguing that AI is moving faster than humans are morally prepared for. The date he signed it is the interesting part: May 15, the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII’s 1891 text on the industrial revolution. That encyclical did not tell the factories to stop — it insisted they serve human dignity. Leo XIV is making the same move for AI.
The fear sounds familiar: technology moving faster than we are ready for. And every time, the prediction that machines will simply replace workers turns out to be wrong.
It is the Jevons paradox. In 1865, the economist noticed that more efficient steam engines did not reduce coal consumption — they exploded it. Efficiency creates more demand, not less. AI in finance works the same way. Cheaper cognition does not shrink the work; it multiplies the transactions, suppliers, and edge cases that still need human judgment. The work relocates to where people are worth more.
But even if Jevons is right — and I think he is — the Pope is afraid of two things efficiency alone cannot fix: people being reduced to data points, and power concentrating in fewer hands. He is right that those are the risks. The answer is to build the kind of AI that keeps a human in the judgment seat. That is the side I want to be on.