Set against “Planet of the Apes,” Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas points to a subtler danger than AI domination: that humans may come to imitate the machines they create.
The Planet of the Apes franchise, which began with the 1968 film, continued to be adapted through its most recent installment in 2024.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world, humans and intelligent apes clash for dominance. The result is a reversal of roles: highly intelligent apes rise to supremacy while humans are enslaved.
Over time, the series became a cultural touchstone on hubris and self-destruction. Across its iterations, it repeatedly asks who deserves dominion, what makes a society humane, and how violence and technology reshape identity.
Today, in an AI-shaped world, the series feels newly relevant. The competition—if not struggle—is no longer between humans and intelligent apes, but between humans and their own creation. Beyond questions of dominance, we now face ominous concerns about society, humanity, and technology.
The belief that AI will dominate or enslave humans is widespread, especially in popular culture. Technophobes often point to The Terminator (1984) as the most iconic depiction of AI domination: Skynet becomes sentient, launches a nuclear holocaust, and wages a war to exterminate humanity.
Her (2013) and Ex Machina (2015) present two very different paths to AI superiority—one through emotional attachment that quietly replaces human relationships, the other through intelligence that surpasses human control and moral comprehension.
Technophiles, by contrast, find solace in depictions of benevolent AI: the compassionate helper in The Wild Robot (2024) or the system that prevents global destruction in WarGames (1983).
Leo XIV’s position on technology in general, and AI in particular, is far more nuanced. In Magnifica Humanitas (MH), he distances himself from both the optimism of technophiles and the pessimism of technophobes.
He warns readers “neither to demonize nor idolize technological tools” (MH 137). The encyclical moves beyond the simplistic binary of AI either taking over humanity or faithfully serving it. Reality, he insists, is more complex.
Leo’s metaphor of AI as a “tool” is extensive. He calls it a valuable tool that requires a measured and vigilant approach (MH 100) and insists that its use “is never a purely technical matter” (MH 192). In footnote 123, he cites Pope Francis’s description of AI as “an exciting and fearsome tool.” Leo also rejects the common misconception that technological tools are neutral and become good or bad only through use.
He writes:
“We cannot consider AI to be morally neutral. In reality, every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations. If a system is designed or used in a way that treats some lives as less worthy, or excludes them without the possibility of appeal, then it is not merely a tool ‘to be used well,’ since it has already introduced criteria that contradict the inalienable dignity of the human person” (MH 104).
AI becomes a “tool” capable of reshaping “everyday actions and social relationships” (MH 131). It can “drive profound changes in public and political communication … foster dialogue and participation … construct distorted narratives and blur the boundaries between truth and falsehood” (MH 132).
More than a tool “AI is already an environment in which we are immersed, as well as a force with which we must engage” (MH 110). The content circulating in this digital environment “shapes how people perceive the world and introduces into the collective consciousness images and narratives that direct our desires and influence our daily choices” (MH 135).
Magnifica Humanitas is therefore not a lament but a summons.
It calls humanity to engage AI without fear or naïveté, guided by an anthropology that safeguards dignity and nourishes hope.
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Leo then overturns what I call the “Planet of the Apes Syndrome.” His core anthropological warning is that the real danger is not that technology will take us over, but that we will be fashioned in its image and likeness—“because every technology shapes those who use it” (MH 140).
The deepest danger is that human beings may begin to imitate the systems they create: reducing complexity to data, treating relationships as transactions, and losing the dignity of vulnerability. In his Madrid address earlier this year, he warned against “simplifications that deform the human person,” calling instead for “a fruitful appreciation of complexity.” His concern is not merely cultural or political; it is existential.
This places Leo in continuity with a long tradition within communication theory.
In his book, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), Canadian philosopher and media theorist Marshall McLuhan recounts the story of an old man angrily telling a Chinese sage that whoever uses a machine grows the heart of a machine. In Understanding Media (1964), he writes: “We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
Technologies do not merely extend human powers; they reconfigure human perception and identity. McLuhan’s insight has since been reinforced by neurological research, including recent work by communication specialist Rachid Amadane (2024).
Walter J. Ong, S.J., in Orality and Literacy (1982), argued that writing, print, and electronic media each produce distinct forms of consciousness. His famous line—“Technologies are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness”—captures the idea that human tools reshape our cognition, memory, and perception of reality.
Yuval Noah Harari, in Homo Deus (2015) and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018), extends this analysis to algorithms and digital platforms. He repeats McLuhan’s aphorism: “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
Algorithmic thinking, he warns, trains humans to see themselves as data sets, encourages optimization over contemplation, and renders behavior predictable and programmable.
In later work, Harari adapts this insight to AI. At Davos in 2026, he argued: “The most important thing to know about AI is that it is not just another tool. It is an agent.” This marks a decisive transition. An agent acts autonomously and generates new content—characteristics not usually associated with tools.
While Magnifica Humanitas places Leo XIV firmly within this intellectual tradition, he ultimately moves beyond it. More than offering a deep analysis of AI’s role, the encyclical presents a Christian anthropology.
This is what makes Leo’s contribution distinctive. For him, the human person is endowed with dignity, interiority, and relational depth—realities no algorithm can quantify. This theological grounding introduces a note of hope largely absent from secular analyses.
Leo thus overturns what I call the “Planet of the Apes syndrome”: the fear that humanity will be conquered by its own creations. He acknowledges the danger that humans may begin to imitate machines, but drawing on the Christian vision of the person, he insists that this trajectory is not inevitable.
Human beings can resist technological reductionism because they are more than data, more than systems, and more than programmable behavior.
To sustain this resistance, Leo proposes both a political and a religious strategy. I will comment only about the latter, which is a four-pillar strategy: faith “which contemplates the Father’s loving plan; love, which unites us in one ecclesial body; and hope, which sustains our actions in the world,” together with prayer (MH 243).
He even proposes Mary’s Magnificat as a political program: the mighty cast down, the lowly raised up. This is a radically new vision for humanity—one in which, like Mary, we become “weavers of hope,” so that through “the humble fidelity of daily life, even the era of AI can become a time in which the Holy Spirit brings about the civilization of love in our lives” (MH 245).
Magnifica Humanitas is therefore not a lament but a summons. It calls humanity to engage AI without fear or naïveté, guided by an anthropology that safeguards dignity and nourishes hope.
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