Pope Leo XIV signed his first encyclical on artificial intelligence and human dignity on May 15, deliberately timed 135 years after his namesake published the document that gave the industrial revolution its moral framework. The encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, is scheduled for publication the following week and represents a watershed moment: for the first time, the world's major faith institutions and AI companies are entering structured dialogue about the values that should govern this technology before the architecture becomes too rigid to change.

The timing matters enormously. Unlike the industrial revolution, which developed its moral framework decades after the damage was already done, this moment offers a rare window to embed human dignity into AI systems while they are still being built. The stakes could not be higher. According to those closest to the technology, the transformation ahead will dwarf anything humanity has experienced before.

Why Are Tech Leaders Comparing AI to the Industrial Revolution?

The architects of modern artificial intelligence are unambiguous about the scale of what is coming. Google DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis, a Nobel laureate and one of the architects of modern artificial intelligence, has described this moment as 10 times the industrial revolution, at 10 times the speed. This is not rhetorical flourish. Anthropic's Dario Amodei speaks of systems surpassing human capability across almost every domain within a matter of years. OpenAI's Sam Altman has suggested what lies ahead may require a new social contract on the scale of the New Deal.

These assessments come from people who understand the technology intimately. If they are correct, then the decisions being made right now will shape the conditions of human life for generations to come. The real promise of AI extends far beyond productivity gains or market returns. The deeper promise is a genuine civilizational uplift: compressing decades of scientific progress, extending human capability to people who have never had access to it, and expanding agency rather than concentrating it.

What Is the Faith-AI Covenant Project Trying to Accomplish?

The problem is structural. The two communities most capable of shaping this moment, the builders of AI and the world's great moral and faith institutions, have never been in serious dialogue. They occupy parallel universes, each with an incomplete picture. The Faith-AI Covenant project is designed to change that dynamic by bringing together AI companies and the world's faith traditions in structured dialogue on the values that must govern this technology.

This is not about obstruction or external regulation. Instead, it aims to bring the wisdom, moral authority, and trust that faith communities have earned over millennia into the conversation while the architecture is still being built and the path dependencies have not yet run too deep to redirect. Last month in New York, the first roundtable brought representatives from Anthropic, OpenAI, and others into the same room as senior religious leaders from across every tradition.

How to Engage With the Moral Framework Debate in AI Development

• The Timing Problem: The industrial revolution developed its moral framework decades after communities were hollowed out, workers exploited, and children had already paid the price of progress that was not designed with them in mind. This time, the moral framework is being written before the architecture is fixed.
• The Stakeholder Question: Faith leaders bring something the technology sector cannot manufacture: the trust of nearly one and a half billion people who are not asking whether AI is impressive, but whether it is just and whether it will leave their communities behind or bring them forward.
• The Values Embedded in Systems: The deeper promise of AI depends entirely on the values embedded in the systems being built, the diversity of voices shaping them, and the frameworks governing how they are deployed. Right now, those decisions are being made within an extraordinarily narrow circle without the participation of the communities most affected.

The conversations between faith leaders and AI builders have been unlike anything seen before in the technology sector. Faith communities bring a perspective grounded in centuries of experience with human transformation and moral questions that technologists alone cannot answer. They ask the right questions: whether AI will be just, whether it will leave communities behind, or whether it will bring them forward.

As Joanna Shields notes in her work on the Faith-AI Covenant Project, there is a constituency of nearly one and a half billion people who believe human dignity is nonnegotiable, and they are paying attention. The encyclical sends a clear signal to every government, every investor, and every technology company that human dignity is not negotiable.

Rerum Novarum, the document signed by Pope Leo XIII 135 years ago, changed the trajectory of the industrial revolution. But it arrived too late for the people who needed it most. This time, the moral framework is being written before the architecture is fixed. That is the moment we are in.