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Welcome to CNET’s new guest column series called Alt View, a forum for a diverse group of experts and notable figures to share their insights into the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. For more AI coverage, check out CNET Atlas of Artificial Intelligence.
The recent industrial revolution got its moral framework too late. AI doesn’t have to.
Last November, I was lucky enough to meet with Pope Leo XIV for a special session on the dignity of children and artificial intelligence. I asked Pope Leo if he was comfortable with AI becoming the operating system for people’s lives.
He paused for what seemed like an eternity.
Then he simply said: No.
On May 15, Pope Leo signed the Treaty of Magnifica Humanitas – his first patrolAbout artificial intelligence and protecting human dignity. It will be published next week. He signed it 135 years to the day when Leo XIII, his namesake, published the Rerum Novarum – the document that gave the Industrial Revolution its moral framework. The parallel is intentional.
Rerum Novarum arrived decades after the start of the Industrial Revolution. By then, the communities had already emptied out. Exploitation of workers. Children have already paid the price for progress that was not designed with them in mind. The moral framework came, but only after the damage had been done and the building repaired.
The people who build AI have no ambiguity about the scale of what is to come. Google’s Demis Hassabis – Nobel laureate, founder of DeepMind, and one of the architects of modern artificial intelligence – has described this moment as 10 times the Industrial Revolution, 10 times faster. Anthropic’s Dario Amodei talks about systems exceeding human capabilities in almost every field within a matter of years. OpenAI’s Sam Altman suggested that what lies ahead may require a new social contract on the scale of the New Deal.
These are not rhetorical claims. It’s the thoughtful evaluations of those closest to the technology.
If they are right – and I believe they are – then what we decide in this window will shape the conditions of human life for many generations. Not just for those who can afford the best gadgets or live in the most connected cities, but for everyone.
This is the true promise of artificial intelligence. Not productivity gains or market returns – although those will come. The deeper promise is true civilizational uplift: scaling back decades of scientific progress, expanding human capabilities to include people who never had access to any of them, and expanding rather than concentrating capacity.
But this result is not guaranteed with the presence of technology. It depends entirely on the values embedded in the systems being built, the diversity of voices that constitute them, and the frameworks that govern how they are disseminated. Currently, these decisions are made within a very narrow circle; Without the participation of the most affected communities, and without the ethical frameworks that have guided humanity through the transformation before.
This is not a criticism of those who build AI. Most of them understand the weight of what they are carrying. The problem is structural: the two societies most capable of shaping this moment – the builders of artificial intelligence, and the world’s major moral and religious institutions – have never engaged in serious dialogue. They occupy parallel universes, each with an incomplete picture.
That’s what Charter of Faith and Artificial Intelligence Project It is designed to change. We bring together AI companies and global religious traditions in a structured dialogue about the values that should govern this technology. Not to obstruct. No to regulation from outside. But to bring the wisdom, moral authority, and trust that religious communities have gained over millennia into the conversation, while the architecture is still being built, and path dependencies are not too deep to be redirected.
Last month in New York, our first roundtable brought together representatives from Anthropic, OpenAI, and others in the same room with senior religious leaders from across faiths. The conversations were unlike any I’ve had in four decades in this industry. Religious leaders bring something the tech sector can’t manufacture: the trust of billions of people who don’t wonder if artificial intelligence is impressive. They wonder if it’s fair. Whether that will leave their communities behind, or move them forward.
Those are the right questions. They must be asked now.
The public message sends a clear signal to every government, every investor, and every technology company: there is an electoral base of nearly one and a half billion people who believe that human dignity is non-negotiable. And they are paying attention.
Rerum Novarum changed the course of the Industrial Revolution. But it arrived too late for the people who needed it most.
This time, the ethical framework is written before the structure is reformed. That is the moment we are in.
