The case

This thought-provoking book brings together the people shaping the future of artificial intelligence. The pioneering scientists who laid its foundations, the researchers and engineers driving today’s breakthroughs, the leaders behind OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Anthropic, SpaceXAI, Amazon and Oracle, the investors pouring billions into the AI race as well as the visionaries exploring where this technology may ultimately lead humanity. The final voice, however, is the most unexpected: Pope Leo XIV.

Source: Arthur Sterling, Victoria Whitmore – Die KI-Elite – Was die wichtigsten KI-Köpfe über unsere Zukunft sagen. DCP Verlag 2026 – E-Book ISBN: 978-3-98674-213-3

The commentary

In 2026, while global attention has been centering on increasingly powerful AI models, humanoid robots and autonomous systems, the Vatican is joining the conversation. Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“The Greatness of Humanity”) not as a theological reflection for believers alone, but as a timely intervention in the defining technological revolution of the 21st century.

Deliberately released on the anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s landmark 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, the text draws a striking parallel between the Industrial Revolution and the AI revolution. The essential question is no longer how machines transform work, but how they are going to shape the future of humanity.

Without embracing either technological optimism nor fear, Leo XIV argues that humanity stands at a historic crossroads. It can build a new Tower of Babel, where intelligence is concentrated in the hands of a few and technology deepens division, or it can ensure that AI remains a tool that serves human dignity and the common good, or, as the encyclical cautions: “A more moral AI is of little value if that morality is defined by only a few.”