Education has proven to be a major theme of Leo XIV’s papacy thus far. We can see this in his apostolic letter on education, “Drawing New Maps of Hope,” and his recent address to students and professors at the Catholic University of Central Africa, where he highlighted that “the Catholic university is called to assume a responsibility of the highest order…shaping minds capable of discernment and hearts ready for love and service.” This concern for education can also be found in his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas.” An encyclical on what it means to be human, it is also a clarion call to educators to maintain or recover a vision of education centered on human rather than artificial intelligence. 

Pope Leo’s educational vision—shaped by his formation in the Order of St. Augustine—emphasizes two mutually inhering realities: interiority and communality. Thus, real education requires “rhythms that incorporate silence, in-depth study, reading and judicious analysis.” We need these to foster the “inner freedom” so necessary for the development of the human person. But this learning is never done in isolation. Citing Plato, Leo challenges us to engage “in discussion with others, ‘striking upon’ ideas and experiences together like flint until the spark of understanding is kindled within us.” Education thus entails the interior movement of silence, reflection and active reading alongside shared dialogue that draws out and deepens our understanding. 

The interiority and communality of education need direction. For Leo, “School is the place where new generations can learn to seek and love the truth, to reflect on the meaning of life and to recognize the dignity of every person.” This threefold vocation of education centers on truth, ethical and religious meaning, and service of the dignity of all people—but especially the marginalized. These three priorities should form and direct the important but secondary technical training that is a part of education. 

Importantly for Leo, this vision of education is dynamic. Education necessarily entails the deep love of truth that moves us on a pilgrimage toward truth. With any pilgrimage, you cannot have someone else do it for you because the pilgrimage is, in part, about self-becoming according to the destination. Thus, for Pope Leo, education “is a long journey requiring patience, and therefore needs time for development and for engagement with reality beyond appearances.” The periods of interiority—the wrestling with texts, the hard work in the laboratory, the dynamics of dialogue and the activity of writing—all take time and are a journey that brings us to truth and so transforms us. 

Artificial intelligence is a particular threat to education because it risks substituting itself for real thinking, for the search for truth, for the cultivation of the human person and for the fostering of justice. In other words, too many students and teachers are tempted to let A.I. do the pilgrimage of truth for us, meaning that no one travels to or arrives at truth, and no one is transformed by real education. Thus, Leo notes that “[w]ithout careful attention, an educational system lacking in a love for truth may emerge, in which an incessant flow of information replaces the essential exercise of research, reflection and discernment.” 

This threat is perennial but has hyperintensified in the A.I. age. The substitution of artificial intelligence for human intelligence threatens the formation of the person as a knower and lover of truth. Thus, Leo warns that as “knowledge becomes increasingly fragmented, it becomes difficult to grasp reality as a whole, to ask profound questions about meaning, or to develop authentic, critical and creative thought.” Losing our own questions and thoughts, we lose our grasp of the real, which is precisely what truth is. 

It is in considering the nature of education that Leo has some of his strongest claims about the need to restrain A.I. “We must learn, then, how to exercise restraint in the use of AI,” he writes, to protect the young from that “subtle temptation which renders human thought seemingly superfluous precisely when it is most needed.” Along these lines, Leo admonishes us to teach students when not to use A.I., warns of the dangers of technology for young people and advises that “[s]chools are not called to follow the pace of the digital world, but to offer that which the digital sphere by itself cannot provide, namely a shared time for learning and developing trustworthy relationships.” While not wholly denying some usages of A.I. for education, he largely warns against it. 

How are those of us who work in education doing on the A.I. front? At the collegiate level, universities do not seem to be rising to the moment. Too many are rushing to use A.I. to enhance teaching effectiveness, with professors learning how to develop syllabi, prompts and assignments using A.I. Likewise, students are promised training in advanced use of A.I., even as they are pressured by society to substitute summaries for texts, chatbots for writing and A.I.-generated formulas for mathematics or scientific research. 

Catholic colleges should be different from other universities, and there are signs of hope. For instance, Fordham University is offering a certificate focused on A.I. ethics and considering ways that A.I. can be put in the service of the common good. But there are a lot of worrisome signs, too. The business world demands of us a “strictly mercantilist approach…measured in terms of functionality and practical utility,” as Leo puts it in “New Maps of Hope.” This drive motivates Catholic colleges—from Loyola Marymount to St. Anselm—to drop core requirements or reduce them dramatically. For instance, Fordham is in the process of reducing their theology and philosophy requirement from two courses in each discipline to just one; likewise, Marymount University eliminated multiple liberal arts programs, including its theology department. Such cuts threaten the kind of attentive thinking and theocentric education so needed in our time.

In a world forgetting about divinity and neglecting or oppressing our brethren, we need to defend and expand our core curricula in the Catholic tradition to elevate the dignity of humanity. We need to defend the space of silence and study by restricting access to A.I. on campus while developing new assignments to promote engaged reading, thinking, writing and speaking. Laptops and phones should be exiled from most classrooms, considering the research on how counterproductive they are to learning. 

Along these lines, we should remember that dialogue “is an integral part of the Church’s vocation” and is also integral to education, which is why seminars are so important. Finally, students need “formation concerning the proper and critical use of digital tools” so that they serve the education of persons. But this formation can only take place in the context of a human education, not an artificial one. 

“Magnifica Humanitas” is a significant contribution to the ethics of A.I. in general and the meaning of education. I hope all educators of goodwill heed its teaching. But Catholic educators will need to take the lead. Catholic education needs to both restrain and redirect A.I. in the context of the loving pilgrimage to truth and a holistic education of the human person. We need to develop our schools as places of interiority and communality that simultaneously believe in the contemplative joy of learning for its own sake and the driven conviction that learning is best done in the service of human dignity.

This article has been updated.

Terence Sweeney is a professor in the Honors Program at Villanova University.