Because the world mourns the passing of Pope Francis and displays on his legacy, each Catholics and non-Catholics are sharing their admiration of his advocacy for immigrant rights, peace and environmental conservation. He was additionally a robust advocate for accountable expertise, and right here within the Puget Sound area, so famous for being on the forefront of expertise innovation, we should bear in mind Pope Francis’ legacy as an mental, advocate and community-builder for the protected, accountable and moral growth and use of expertise.
From his early days as pope, Francis used social media to achieve out to the world, constructing on what his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, had began. Francis’ first tweet, despatched March 17, 2013, learn, “Pricey pals, I thanks from my coronary heart and I ask you to proceed to hope for me.” He continued to make use of Twitter (now X) and Instagram, garnering hundreds of thousands of followers, posting messages about religion and urging accountable use of social media on the similar time. As of 2025, the papal X account operated in 9 languages with over 53 million followers.
Quick ahead to his final months, and he was equally technology-savvy. Take the newest Popemobile, which arrived in time for the 2025 Jubilee, a totally electrical Mercedes-Benz that maybe mirrored his name for environmentally sustainable growth within the 2015 Laudato Si’ encyclical letter.
Embrace of recent expertise was a part of his message to believers, as was his want to floor technological progress in morality. Laudato Si’ acknowledges the great energy that people have acquired due to expertise, which, if used correctly, might enhance life and well-being. Nevertheless, the remainder of the textual content is a stark warning in opposition to the technocratic paradigm that threatens “our frequent dwelling” due to environmental deterioration and consequently, human well-being. Pope Francis’ a number of warnings concerning the growth and use of synthetic intelligence within the absence of threat mitigation measures present his deep concern for human and non-human flourishing in a world of fast technological change, and his willingness to lend his voice to those that have been trapped on the unsuitable finish of such change.
Pope Francis did greater than provide particular person reflections on the social implications of expertise — he inspired expertise ethics advocacy within the Catholic Church and constructed bridges with politicians, trade leaders and nonprofits. He selected the Rev. Paolo Benanti, a Franciscan friar and professor on the Pontifical Gregorian College with a background in engineering and philosophy, as his adviser on AI and expertise ethics (Benanti additionally serves as a visiting distinguished scholar at Seattle College). Their pondering and public diplomacy culminated within the Rome Call, an AI ethics doc adhered to by a number of companies like Microsoft and IBM together with educational establishments.
Underneath his papacy, Vatican leaders started to share their views on the applied sciences of immediately and tomorrow. Virtually 10 years after Francis’ personal reflections within the Laudato Si’, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Religion and the Dicastery for Tradition and Training revealed “Antiqua et Nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence” conveying their place on what it means to be human within the face of machine intelligence. The doc emphasizes the embodied and relational character of human intelligence to criticize the notion that AI can substitute, quite than improve, human colleges. Reflecting a theme Pope Francis had already touched on in Laudato Si’, the doc asks for the form of AI growth that mitigates dangers, prevents hurt and ensures that “its purposes are used to advertise human progress and the frequent good.”
His humble character and advocacy for justice and peace earned him many admirers, together with those that combat for protected, accountable and truthful expertise growth and use. It’s potential that we’re hurtling towards the technologically induced ethical disaster he warned in opposition to. But, many people, Catholic or in any other case, discover inspiration in Pope Francis’s core message — it’s our nice privilege and duty to collectively take care of our frequent dwelling.
