Updated: September 29, 2026
Artificial intelligence is changing how we work, learn, communicate, shop, and spend our time. But as these technologies become more powerful, there are some important questions we need to ask: Who is this technology actually serving? And who is paying the hidden cost?
In Chapter 4 of Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV moves from the broad principles we’ve discussed in the previous chapters into the concrete ways technology and artificial intelligence are affecting human life. The chapter is called “Safeguarding Humanity at a Time of Transformation”.
Amanda and Jonathan talk through some of the biggest questions raised in the chapter, including truth and disinformation, attention and distraction, education, work, families, business models, data, surveillance, and even new forms of slavery.
AI, Truth, and the Culture We’re Creating
One of the first things Pope Leo addresses is truth.
Disinformation isn’t new. Humanity has been dealing with propaganda, distorted narratives, and the manipulation of information for a very long time. But AI can act as an amplifier, making it easier and faster to create and distribute misleading images, videos, and other content.
That raises an important question: What happens when we stop treating truth as something we discover and instead start treating reality as something we can construct?
The chapter also points out that communication isn’t simply about transferring information. What happens online helps form our culture in the real world—especially for young people.
And this is where things get especially interesting for us as parents.
Amanda and Jonathan talk about how culture is increasingly being formed on platforms like TikTok and other digital spaces. What begins online doesn’t necessarily stay online. It influences the way we speak, think, behave, and understand the world around us.
Who Owns Our Attention?
Then we get into something that hits much closer to home: attention.
Pope Leo warns about excessive distraction and the enormous influence held by the people and companies controlling digital platforms. Algorithms can determine what gets amplified, what gets buried, and what keeps us scrolling.
And let’s be honest: we’ve all experienced this.
Amanda shares some of her own frustration with social media and the way platforms can use our interests, insecurities, and behavior to serve us increasingly targeted content and advertisements. The question isn’t simply whether technology is “good” or “bad.” We also have to ask how it is designed, what incentives are behind it, and what is being done with the information it collects about us.
That’s where AI and human dignity intersect in a very practical way.
If a business model depends on keeping us distracted, exploiting our weaknesses, or collecting enormous amounts of personal information without us really understanding what is happening, we need to think seriously about the human person behind the data.
What Happens When AI Does Our Thinking for Us?
The chapter also takes a fascinating turn toward education.
Pope Leo points out that digital media can foster a culture of immediacy and hyperstimulation. Getting an answer instantly can feel helpful, but there is a danger when convenience begins replacing the work of thinking, questioning, reading, discussing, and learning.
Amanda admits that this one hit close to home.
It’s easy to use AI to help generate ideas, summarize something we’re reading, or get us unstuck. But if we become dependent on having a machine do the difficult thinking for us, we can gradually lose the habit of doing that work ourselves.
And that’s an important distinction.
The question isn’t simply, “Can AI do this for me?”
It’s also, “Should I let AI do this for me?”
Sometimes the effort is part of the point.
What Happens to Work?
From there, the conversation moves into one of the areas most relevant to WalletWin: work.
Work isn’t merely a way to produce things or generate income. Pope Leo connects work with dignity, human development, vocation, and family life.
That becomes especially important as automation changes the employment landscape.
Amanda and Jonathan discuss the possibility that AI could increasingly take over entry-level work—the very work through which people traditionally gain experience and develop skills. If all of the easiest jobs disappear, where does the next generation go to learn how to work?
The chapter argues that technological progress cannot be evaluated simply by asking whether it makes production faster or more efficient.
We also have to ask what happens to the people involved.
What happens to workers and to families when employment becomes less stable?
What happens to young people who need opportunities to develop their skills?
And what happens when productivity becomes more important than the person doing the work?
When Business Models Profit From Human Weakness
One of the lines Amanda and Jonathan spend significant time discussing comes from the section on freedom and commercialization:
“When business models thrive on human weakness, the person is treated as a means rather than as an end.”
That applies far beyond artificial intelligence.
Think about advertising designed to exploit insecurity. Products designed around impulse. Platforms designed to maximize engagement. Content designed to keep you watching even when it isn’t actually adding anything valuable to your life.
Amanda and Jonathan even get into the uncomfortable question of whether some online business models exist primarily to monetize people’s weaknesses.
The way we make money matters.
How we make money matters.
And technological advancement doesn’t remove that moral responsibility. If anything, it increases it because technology allows businesses to reach, influence, and manipulate people at a scale that wasn’t previously possible.
The Hidden People Behind AI
Then Pope Leo takes the conversation somewhere that is easy to overlook when we’re sitting at home using an AI tool with the click of a button.
Every seemingly effortless digital experience depends on an enormous physical and human infrastructure.
The chapter talks about the people involved in data labeling, model training, and content moderation—work that can be largely invisible to the people benefiting from the final product.
It also discusses the people involved in extracting the natural resources necessary for the technology itself, including workers and children in dangerous conditions.
That doesn’t mean we have to reject every technological advancement.
But it does mean we should be willing to ask:
Who made this possible?
Who did the work?
What resources were required?
Who benefited?
And who might have been harmed or exploited along the way?
Just because we don’t see the person doesn’t mean the person isn’t there.
Data, Power, and New Forms of Exploitation
The chapter then takes another surprising turn as it examines new forms of colonialism.
Pope Leo argues that colonialism can take new forms when people and organizations extract and control personal and community data. Health data, genetic information, demographic information, and other personal data can become incredibly valuable—and whoever controls that information can gain significant power.
This brings us back to one of the central questions of the entire chapter:
Who is technology really serving?
When we make technology the ultimate measure of what matters, we can gradually reduce the human person to data, a cog in a machine, or a commodity.
But we can choose a different path.
We can use technology as an instrument of growth, justice, and fraternity when we order it toward the good of the human person.
What Can We Do?
One of the things we appreciate about this chapter is that Pope Leo doesn’t leave us with a simple “technology is bad” message.
Instead, he keeps bringing us back to human dignity, truth, work, freedom, family, and the common good.
That gives us a much more useful framework for thinking about AI.
As Catholics, we don’t have to approach every new technology with either blind enthusiasm or automatic suspicion. We can ask better questions.
Does this technology help human beings flourish?
Does it respect human dignity and serve the common good?
Will it help us become more free, or more dependent?
Strengthen human relationships, or replace them?
And perhaps most importantly:
Who is this technology actually serving?
Chapter 4 makes the point that these issues aren’t isolated. Truth, education, work, families, technology, and new forms of exploitation are all connected because they all come back to the same fundamental question: What happens to the human person when technology becomes the ultimate criterion?
We all have some responsibility here.
Whether you’re building technology, investing in companies, raising children, running a business, using social media, or simply deciding how much of your own attention you are willing to give away, you have a part to play.
Technology is going to continue changing.
The question is whether we will allow that change to shape us without thinking—or whether we will intentionally put the human person back at the center.
And that’s exactly where we’ll pick up in Chapter 5 of Magnifica Humanitas: “The Culture of Power and the Civilization of Love.”
Resources
📖 Read the full text of Magnifica Humanitas
Read along with us as we work through Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on artificial intelligence, human dignity, work, and the common good.
Read the PDF of Magnifica Humanitas.
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