The encyclical released this week is being characterized primarily as a Critique of AI. But to be frank it’s not so much of AI as of the economics, and particularly the disparity between wealth and poverty that is behind AI’s rise. And also of the exploitation of people, the environment and the spiritual realm that seems to be happening too.

Parenthetically: The Encyclical is mostly about the terrifying ways we are abusing power and the lies we tell ourselves that justifies the abuse. It’s a pretty devastating critique of end stage capitalism, of the Unfettered Free Market and the nonsense that Ayn Rand penned.

Pope Leo grounds his thinking in what it means to be human, and to be made in the Image of God, a God who is Love.

At the core of Pope’s Encyclical, that Image of God, is understood through the lens of the Trinity. The true Unity of God is shown forth to us in Scripture by the revelation that God is One Being in three Persons. That paradoxical statement is shown to be possible because the persons of the Trinity are united to each other through a self-giving, self-emptying love for each other. It is their mutual and perfect love that is the Unity that makes God totally and completely One being. (We worship One God, we are monotheistic. The loving relationships, the mutuality, is why we can say that about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.)

Because God is a Perfect Unity that emerges from the perfect Love of three persons, and because, as the Bible says in Genesis: humanity is created in the Image of God, then humanity is meant for relationship and for love.

We get that wrong a great deal, but that is why we are. It’s the end goal of what humanity was created to become. And it is what the AI we are creating will not achieve.

You can view the full sermon at this link.