Hope above Fear:

A Catholic Response to the AI Scare

What was your reaction to the AI scare? Did it give you the feeling that they are here? Of course, it would not be out of place if you were scared. While scholars and pundits have deliberated over the years on the imminent and potential danger of Artificial Intelligence, never has the AI industry frightened itself as it did this past summer. From Jacob Coxon’s ten-year doomsday warning to Dario Amodei warning of AI agents gone rogue, when technology makers call for caution on the operations and use of their products, the world should rightly pay attention.

But the word is attention, not panic! And Catholics, of all people, can easily distinguish between the two.

The word, fear is not new to the church. The command “Do not be afraid” is one of the most recurrent instructions in the Bible, from the call of Abraham to Mary’s visitation, down to Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances. And when John Paul II echoed the same words in his inaugural pontifical mass on October 22, 1978, he didn’t guarantee a world free from harm. But to realize that fear yields poor outcomes, and that our journey as Christians is that of courage.

The danger of the current AI scare is that it casts the machine as an anthropomorphic protagonist that goes rogue, escapes, decides, and conspires against the prompts of its developers who are now cast in the shadows. This line of thinking has been theorized in different dimensions by human-machine communication scholars from the angle of media dependency, authenticity, and persuasion or self-extension.

In this case, the consequences of assigning life to machines imply that the people who built and funded the innovations are transformed into witnesses from whom accountability is rarely sought. Although some executives are calling for restraint, much of what is being offered so far is voluntary or arranged by the industries themselves; hence, the need for caution.

But the church is not new to scares. The late 19th-century industrial revolution, which transformed Europe, brought similar fears, and the church, led by Pope Leo XIII, promptly addressed the fears through his encyclical Rerum Novarum. The Pope’s message was neither to destroy the machines nor to idolize the accompanying progress. The focus was on a more cogent question: How does this affect the human person? His answers birthed Catholic social teaching on the dignity of labor, private property, just wages, and the right to unionize.

Pope Leo XIV took his name bearing this history in mind and manifested that in signing his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on the 135 th anniversary of Leo XII letter with focus on human safety in the age of AI. The current document contains an important teaching, which I consider the church’s fitting response to the AI scare. The real choice before us Pope declares, “is not between enthusiasm and fear, but between two paths of development: progress that serves people and peoples, or progress that bends them to the logic of power” (129).

The Pope’s message reechoes Melvin Kranzberg’s first law of technology: “technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” The non-neutrality of technology implies that it is never morally empty but rather takes on the coloration of its designers, promoters, and regulators. In this sense, there is no rogue agent without an organization behind it, and it means little when ethical practice in AI development and deployment is left at the discretion of small circles of stakeholders, as opined by President Donald Trump in his response to the scare. The right call is to enact people-oriented legislation with a focus on independent oversight and public accountability.

While the original idea behind the evolution of machines is to aid humans, much of the current enthusiasm around AI rests on the desire to conquer human limits. This creates modern tech-utopianism, which seeks to engineer away the human person. Pope Leo counsels (118) that thehuman person is inseparable from its limits. Thus, a culture that seeks to curb weakness, perceiving it only as inefficiency rather than a natural human experience, will likely evolve tools that treat people similarly.

Essentially, the dignity of labor, which the church has defended for 135 years, still applies. Work still matters, and Pope Leo rightly observes that AI often constrains workers to keep pace with machines rather than functioning in the service of the people. Thus, at the core of all conversations about the goodness or danger of AI must be the dignity of both ordinary farm workers and top executives alike.

But this should not lead to a loss of hope. For us Christians, hope does not simply mean being optimistic about machines but being confident that power will not be the sole determinant of history. The Babel metaphor at the beginning of the encyclical illustrates further that the problem is never with innovation, but with an innovation that deemphasizes God and human dignity in favor of profit and power.

In summary, how should Catholics respond to the AI scare? We should support legislation that prioritizes independent safety audits over the empty promises of technocrats. We should identify with workers whose jobs are being reshaped without their voice. Our children must be raised to utilize AI without outsourcing their capacity for independent thinking. The core principle upheld all round our parishes and schools must remain in line with the church’s teaching, which is that being made in the image of God, we all possess dignity that no machine can take away. AI developers deserve credit for raising alarm on the inherent dangers of AI. The error is to reserve the solution to this danger to them alone. St. John reminds us that perfect love drives fear, and no moment deserves this perfect love like now!

Published October 23rd, 2026

Written by Ebuka Ifeanyichukwu