The Pope Should Be Going to War Against A.I. Why Isn't He?

Leo XIV is not quite what Sylvia Townsend Warner once called an "old harmless pope," but he certainly has a way of keeping headlines innocuous. He's from Chicago, he likes the White Sox, he's against the war in Iran — a year into his papacy, this is more or less what people know about him.

The mildness extends to his theological views. Unlike his recent predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Leo is not an academic theologian. Temperamentally, he is more cautious than Francis was. The questions that seem to interest Leo most are practical and pastoral. He is suspicious of grand, programmatic approaches even to the most serious questions — including that of artificial intelligence, the subject of his first encyclical letter, "Magnifica Humanitas," which was presented on Monday.