Paus Leo XIV menerbitkan naskah teologis pertama kepausannya berupa ensiklik berjudul "Magnifica humanitas: On safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial Intelligence" di Kota Vatikan pada Senin, 25 Mei 2026.
Dokumen sepanjang 42.300 kata tersebut menyerukan pengawasan ketat terhadap kecerdasan buatan (AI) karena berpotensi menggeser pekerja manusia, memperdalam ketimpangan, memicu konflik global, serta menyerahkan kendali senjata mematikan di luar kendali manusia.
Peluncuran naskah ini menghadiri pendiri pendamping laboratorium AI Anthropic, Chris Olah, yang diundang langsung untuk memperluas dialog mengenai dampak teknologi tersebut bagi masa depan peradaban global.
"Every frontier AI lab—including Anthropic—operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing. The pressure to stay commercially viable and to stay at the research frontier. Geopolitical pressure. And the older, plainer pressures of pride and ambition." kata Chris Olah, Pendiri Pendamping Anthropic.
Olah menyatakan bahwa pelaku industri akan selalu dipengaruhi oleh insentif komersial tersebut sehingga kehadiran pihak luar yang independen sangat dibutuhkan untuk mengkritik lab AI.
"That is why, if we want this technology to go well, it is enormously important that there be people outside those incentives—people who care about things going well and insist on safety, who are paying close attention, who are willing to say hard things, who are willing to be our earnest, thoughtful, critics. It is through dialogue and mutual effort, through the push and pull, that humanity will achieve great things." ujar Chris Olah, Pendiri Pendamping Anthropic.
Ia menambahkan bahwa berdasarkan diskusi Anthropic dengan berbagai pemimpin lintas agama, terdapat keyakinan serupa bahwa teknologi baru ini harus berjalan dengan baik demi masa depan generasi mendatang.
"Some might believe that matters of AI are best handled by computer scientists like myself. They are mistaken: the questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community, not just in their implications, but also in their nature. AI systems are not engineered the way a bridge or an airplane is engineered." kata Chris Olah, Pendiri Pendamping Anthropic.
Olah menjelaskan model AI tumbuh berdasarkan struktur yang meniru otak manusia serta akumulasi pemikiran dan ucapan manusia, sehingga karakternya menjadi sangat rumit.
"They are not the cold, calculating robots we were promised. They are made from us, from our words—and, as the Holy Father observes, they remain in important ways mysterious even to those of us who train them. If it helps, one way I sometimes describe it is as being a little like bringing a fictional character to life." ujar Chris Olah, Pendiri Pendamping Anthropic.
Olah kemudian memaparkan tiga pertanyaan mendasar bagi diskresi bersama, yang dimulai dari kekhawatiran mengenai nasib kelompok miskin global jika AI menggantikan tenaga kerja manusia dalam skala masif.
"AI development is concentrated in a handful of wealthy nations. How can we ensure the gains of AI are shared globally? We do not have a mechanism for this. It is an unsolved problem, and it is the kind of problem the Church has historically refused to let the world ignore." kata Chris Olah, Pendiri Pendamping Anthropic.
Pertanyaan kedua menyangkut imajinasi moral tentang bagaimana manusia dan keluarga bisa tetap berkembang di tengah kekhawatiran orang tua terhadap perkembangan mental anak-anak mereka akibat AI.
"Today, parents are already worried about their children’s minds; individuals about the future of their work. These are not questions a lab can answer but they are questions traditions like yours have carried for millennia, and we need you to keep carrying them into this new moment in history." ujar Chris Olah, Pendiri Pendamping Anthropic.
Hal ketiga berkaitan dengan struktur internal model AI itu sendiri, di mana tim peneliti sains bentukan Olah terus menemukan keganjilan mendalam di dalam sistem tersebut.
"We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection. We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease. I don’t know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment." kata Chris Olah, Pendiri Pendamping Anthropic.
Olah menutup pemaparannya dengan meminta keterlibatan masyarakat sipil, komunitas agama, dan pemerintah di seluruh dunia untuk ikut mengarahkan perkembangan teknologi ini ke arah yang lebih aman.
"I didn't know that tech editorializing was part of the role of being pope," kata Doug Burgum, Menteri Dalam Negeri Amerika Serikat.
Pernyataan bernada kritik tersebut disampaikan Burgum dalam wawancara bersama Fox Business pada Selasa, 26 Mei 2026, yang langsung membuka front perdebatan baru antara pemerintahan Donald Trump dan pihak Vatikan.
"What I read of it sounds very profound, and the sort of thing that you would expect and hope from a leader of the church," ujar JD Vance, Wakil Presiden Amerika Serikat.
Dalam wawancara telepon terpisah dengan NBC News, Vance justru memuji pesan Paus Leo XIV sebagai bentuk kepemimpinan moral yang sangat dibutuhkan dunia pada awal era kecerdasan buatan.
"The thing about morality is that the principles never change, but the way you apply those principles does, because the world changes, right?" kata JD Vance, Wakil Presiden Amerika Serikat.
Vance menyamakan pembaruan ajaran sosial Katolik ini seperti langkah memutakhirkan doktrin perang ketika menghadapi teknologi persenjataan baru di dunia.
"You have new technologies and warfare, so you have to update ‘Just War’ doctrine," ujar JD Vance, Wakil Presiden Amerika Serikat.
Pria yang baru dibaptis menjadi Katolik pada 2019 itu menyatakan bahwa pemilihan nama kepausan Leo XIV merupakan rujukan langsung untuk menghormati Paus Leo XIII.
"I think that Leo XIV is becoming pope at the beginning of the AI age, and I suspect that if we make it through this successfully, it will be in large part because the pope and the church are able to provide the kind of moral leadership that we need." kata JD Vance, Wakil Presiden Amerika Serikat.
Vance yang sedang mempromosikan buku barunya berjudul Communion juga menceritakan pengalamannya menghapus aplikasi X demi masa prapaskah demi meningkatkan produktivitas kerjanya.
"It’s one of these things where not having that as a distraction, I think, has made me much more productive," ujar JD Vance, Wakil Presiden Amerika Serikat.
Meskipun demikian, Vance mengaku merindukan interaksi langsung tanpa saringan dengan para pengguna media sosial dan pengkritiknya di tengah ketatnya protokoler pengawalan Secret Service.
"I live in such a crazy bubble," kata JD Vance, Wakil Presiden Amerika Serikat.
Perpecahan respons di internal Gedung Putih ini terjadi setelah Presiden Donald Trump memutuskan menunda perintah eksekutif terkait proses peninjauan keselamatan AI sukarela akibat tekanan industri teknologi.
"The vice president now seems to be backtracking on earlier criticisms when he said Pope Leo needs to learn more theology," kata Peter Casarella, Profesor Teologi Duke Divinity School kepada CNBC.
Perselisihan ini diprediksi dapat menciptakan risiko politik bagi Trump yang memperoleh 55 persen suara pemilih Katolik pada pemilu 2024, terutama menjelang pemilihan umum paruh waktu di distrik-distrik krusial.
"The so-called tech right, which is handcuffing the White House from doing something reasonable, I think will be revealed as mistaken," kata Michael Toscano, Direktur Family First Technology Initiative di Institute for Family Studies.
Hingga saat ini, perseteruan publik antara Trump dan Vatikan terus memanas setelah sang presiden sebelumnya mengkritik kebijakan luar negeri Paus Leo XIV dan mengunggah gambar kontroversial di media sosial.
"The back-and-forth dialogue between the pope and the titans of industry has rarely, if ever, been seen before," kata Paolo Carozza, Profesor Hukum University of Notre Dame.
Pihak oposisi diprediksi akan memanfaatkan momentum penolakan Gedung Putih terhadap ensiklik ini sebagai amunisi kampanye politik untuk menarik simpati para pemilih dari kalangan pekerja dan keluarga Katolik.
"The Republican Party has to be careful about who it courts and who it pushes away," kata Ryan Burge, Ilmuwan Politik Washington University.
Burge menyatakan bahwa pemilih Katolik merupakan basis massa krusial bagi kubu Republik setelah kelompok pemilih kulit putih Kristen di wilayah Pennsylvania dan Ohio.
"If I was a Democrat running in a heavily Catholic district in the midterms, Trump comments mocking the Pope would be all over ads," ujar Ryan Burge, Ilmuwan Politik Washington University.
