Pope Leo’s Vital Message About Work in the Age of AI

Pope Leo XIV Releases Encyclical Addressing Artificial Intelligence and the Dignity of Work

Pope Leo XIV issued his first encyclical on Monday, titled “On Safeguarding the Human Person In the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” The document includes a section headed “The Dignity of Work at a Time of Digital Transition,” which states that work “is not simply an instrument; it expresses and enhances the dignity of our lives. It is a requirement of the human condition, a normal path toward maturity, development and personal fulfilment.” The text adds that work provides “a context for expression, relationships and contributing to the community” beyond its role as “a means of sustenance.” It warns that limiting work to “a small fraction of the population” could produce “forced inactivity, a lack of responsibility and the absence of daily tasks and stimuli, resulting in human and cultural impoverishment” and describes such an outcome as “anthropological regression that undermines the foundations of a just and stable social peace.”

The encyclical revives discussion of the dignity of labor in the context of advancing artificial intelligence systems. The phrase has appeared in earlier Catholic documents, including Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, which criticized employers who “degraded” workers “with conditions repugnant to their dignity as human beings,” and Pope John Paul II’s 1981 encyclical on labor, which used the phrase “dignity of work” four times and stated that “Man’s life is built up every day from work” while noting that work also involves “toil and suffering” and “harm and injustice.”

Earlier economic thought has addressed similar themes. In his 1930 essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological progress would eventually free most people from pressing economic needs, leaving them to address “how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him.” Keynes observed that the English aristocracy between the wars often struggled to find purpose without work, describing their example as “very depressing.”

Entrepreneur Elon Musk has expressed a different outlook. In a speech earlier this year, Musk stated that AI and humanoid robots “will actually eliminate poverty” and predicted that “work will be optional. It’ll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that…. Money will stop being relevant at some point in the future.” Musk’s public statements have focused on the potential for broad economic gains from these technologies.

The concept of the dignity of labor predates the current encyclical. Thomas Carlyle described work as a Christian virtue during England’s Industrial Revolution, writing that “there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works.” In the United States, the phrase has been used by figures across political lines. President Joe Biden referred to “the dignity of work” in multiple public remarks. After the 2024 election, Senator Sherrod Brown established the Dignity of Work Institute. Earlier, John D. Rockefeller Jr. stated, “I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.” Martin Luther King Jr., in his final speech to sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968, said, “All labor has dignity” and argued that “it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.”

Public discussion of artificial intelligence and employment has included both concerns about displacement and arguments about new opportunities created by the technology. The encyclical presents one perspective on these developments, drawing on prior Catholic social teaching. Musk’s statements represent a contrasting assessment of how AI systems may affect labor markets and economic participation.

The encyclical does not specify particular policy measures. It focuses on the stated relationship between work and human development as understood within the document’s framework. Earlier encyclicals on labor similarly addressed conditions of employment without prescribing detailed economic models.