Pope Leo XIV has been named in Time magazine’s “Time 100 AI” list for 2025, recognised as one of the world’s top “thinkers” shaping how humanity confronts artificial intelligence. Source: NCR Online.
Time said Leo has chosen a name “in part to meet a revolution: that of AI”. The list includes “leaders,” “innovators,” “shapers.” Leo has been listed in the “thinkers” category
“His name choice is a tribute to Leo XIII, who served during the Industrial Revolution at the close of the 19th century, and railed against the new machine-driven economic systems converting workers into commodities,” Time wrote.
The list is an “annual look at the most influential people in artificial intelligence.”
It was launched in 2023, “in the wake of OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT, the moment many became aware of AI’s potential to compete with and exceed the capabilities of humans.”
The aim of the list is “to show how the direction AI travels will be determined not by machines but by people – innovators, advocates, artists, and everyone with a stake in the future of this technology.”
If Leo continues to marshal the world’s Catholics against AI’s alienating potential, Time said, “Silicon Valley faces a formidable – and unexpected – spiritual counterweight.”
“Upon assuming the papacy in May, Leo XIV told the world that as artificial intelligence ushered in a ‘new industrial revolution,’ the technology would require the ‘defence of human dignity, justice and labour.’ “
The magazine said that when the Vatican hosted a convening in June on AI, ethics and corporate governance, Leo XIV’s keynote speech underlined AI’s potential as a force for good, particularly in health care and scientific discovery.
But AI “raises troubling questions on its possible repercussions on humanity’s openness to truth and beauty, on our distinctive ability to grasp and process reality,” Leo added.
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Time magazine honours Pope Leo as ‘spiritual counterweight’ to Silicon Valley on AI (By Paulina Guzik, OSV News via NCR Online)
