{"id":354,"date":"2026-05-30T15:12:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T15:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=354"},"modified":"2026-05-30T15:12:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T15:12:05","slug":"two-popes-two-industrial-revolutions-and-one-warning-for-big-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=354","title":{"rendered":"Two popes, two industrial revolutions \u2014 and one warning for Big AI"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Since the first act of his papacy \u2013 choosing his name \u2013 the current pope has repeatedly invoked the earlier Leo\u2019s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. That document, which waded into the political and economic debates of the time, denounced the excesses of the Gilded Age and pointed toward a more just social order. Now, Leo XIV has used his first major statement to the world to present a new Rerum Novarum for the age of AI.<\/p>

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Rerum Novarum was more than just a theological text. It helped reshape economic policy around the rights of workers, serving as a spiritual foundation for European social democracy and the 1930s New Deal programs that still undergird economic life for working Americans today. It also spurred a movement of entrepreneurs to transform the economic system from within.<\/p>

<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

Understanding its influence is key to seeing the potential of Leo XIV\u2019s encyclical.<\/p>\n

From guilds to cooperatives in the industrial era<\/h2>\n

In his time, Leo XIII rejected both unfettered capitalism and revolutionary socialism. He invoked the medieval guilds, in which craftspeople self-organized, and asserted the rights of industrial workers to organize as well. This was a radical statement at a time when unions often faced violent suppression from employers and police.<\/p>\n

But in contrast to communist agitators, he didn\u2019t want to do away with private property. He argued that to bring out the best in human beings, as creatures made in the image of God, governments should \u201cinduce as many as possible of the people to become owners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n
Pope Leo XIII. Francesco De Federicis (1853\u20131908) via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption>\n

This was more of a vision than a detailed plan, but Catholics in many countries started trying to figure out what the vision meant in practice.<\/p>\n

The English writers G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, for instance, tried to systematize his vision in a movement they called \u201cdistributism,\u201d which proposed policies for land redistribution and a revival of guilds. In the United States, economist and Catholic priest John A. Ryan argued in favor of cooperatives \u2013 businesses that could be co-owned by workers, consumers or small-business owners.<\/p>\n

Ryan went on to be an important adviser for the New Deal in the United States, which used cooperatives as a powerful tool for economic development through farmer co-ops, rural electric associations and the credit union system.<\/p>\n

The spirit of Rerum Novarum continued to spread. Starting in the 1950s, the largest network of worker cooperatives in the world, the Mondragon Corporation in Spain\u2019s Basque region, was founded by a Catholic priest. It was a direct result of Leo XIII\u2019s encyclical.<\/p>\n

My own career has been in its shadow. As a media scholar and a Roman Catholic \u2013 and an advocate for efforts to build cooperative tech platforms \u2013 I sometimes think of my own work as applying Rerum Novarum to the online economy. With Magnifica Humanitas, the pope appears to be making a similar argument for the age of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

A tale of 2 cities<\/h2>\n

Once again, society is going through an economic upheaval: New technologies are changing the nature of work, political systems are under strain, and wealth inequality is staggering. In Magnifica Humanitas, Leo XIV argues that an intervention akin to Rerum Novarum is needed.<\/p>\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n
Copies of Leo XIV\u2019s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, were distributed at the Vatican on May 25, 2026. AP Photo\/Alessandra Tarantino<\/figcaption>\n

The guiding metaphor of Magnifica Humanitas is the choice between two biblical scenes: the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of Jerusalem under the prophet Nehemiah.<\/p>\n

The first is a story about the dream of a city that sets out to erect a single building as high as the heavens. Babel, as Leo XIV writes in the encyclical, is a city \u201cbuilt on pride and the claim to self-sufficiency.\u201d In the biblical account, the project collapses as the world\u2019s common language is scattered into many diverse ones.<\/p>

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The pope contrasts this with the story of the Hebrew prophet Nehemiah, who lived in the fifth century B.C.E., when Jews were returning from exile to a ruined Jerusalem. Nehemiah organized the city\u2019s rebuilding through a collaborative process based on shared responsibility. While united in prayer, the city\u2019s various families and professions could each put their distinctive marks on their work.<\/p>\n

The current AI industry, he argues, is in danger of becoming a new Tower of Babel. Just a few companies control this powerful technology supposedly poised to transform work, politics and society for everyone.<\/p>\n

He warns that many AI leaders are enthused by ideologies that propose to trade human limits for the godlike powers of machines. Some are even cheerfully embracing a world where human labor is no longer central to the economy. Leo also fears that human choice is becoming more removed from the execution of war.<\/p>\n

In the face of all this, the encyclical calls on people everywhere to adopt \u201cthe pressing duty to remain profoundly human\u201d \u2013 to be neither \u201cspectators\u201d nor \u201ccommentators\u201d but to take an active role by participating in what he calls \u201cthe construction sites of history.\u201d Some already are.<\/p>\n

Construction sites for a different kind of AI<\/h2>\n\n
\"A<\/figure>\n
A few large AI companies dominate the technology and decide how people can use it, but alternative models are beginning to emerge. greenbutterfly\/iStock\/Getty Images Plus<\/figcaption>\n

It is easy to see the emerging AI industry in Babel-like terms \u2013 a few massive tech companies build the models and provide access to them on their terms. But other paths are still possible. My colleagues and I have been documenting cases that could be the germ of a different kind of AI industry \u2013 one more aligned with what the pope is calling for.<\/p>\n

Just as during the Industrial Revolution, a more just future begins with workers resisting against the abuses of the present. From Hollywood to Nairobi, workers have been fighting for dignity as AI changes their professions. Magnifica Humanitas stresses the importance of decent jobs to a healthy society, and workers\u2019 demands can help identify what the future of work should look like.<\/p>\n

Other approaches begin among AI developers themselves. In Switzerland, a collaboration between government and academia has produced Apertus, a foundational model based on fully documented designs and data sources \u2013 a far cry from the opaque and at times illegal practices of leading AI companies. Some of Apertus\u2019 developers have created a consumer cooperative, enabling users to co-own their interface with the model.<\/p>\n

Cooperative ownership like this allows users to tune AI experiences more intentionally toward their needs. The large U.S. farmer co-op Land O\u2019Lakes, for example, has created AI-enabled tools that provide analysis and guidance for its members based on the data that they collectively co-own. The more nascent Transkribus in Europe is co-owned by research institutions that collectively train their AI software to transcribe texts for historical research. These kinds of systems follow Leo XIV\u2019s call to \u201cmanage data as a common or shared good.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is telling that even among leading AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, the founders attempted to build unusual corporate governance structures to insulate their products from profit motives. Governments could encourage more appropriate ownership designs or outright require them for high-risk industries like AI.<\/p>\n

If Rerum Novarum is any guide, the impact of Magnifica Humanitas will depend on the creative entrepreneurship and policy experiments to put it into practice \u2013 and this work has already begun.<\/p>\n

Nathan Schneider, Assistant Professor of Media Studies, University of Colorado Boulder<\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.<\/em><\/p>

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\"The<\/figure>\n\n<\/figurlazyload><\/figurlazyload><\/figurlazyload><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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