I haven’t read much of anything Catholic, not even the Bible. A few days ago, Pope Leo XIV issued an encyclical, which is Vatican for a ‘circular.’ Across more than 42,000 words, he described the problem of artificial intelligence (AI). I may have quarrels with many of his fears, but I believe the pontiff is right about his chief concern, which was also the unspoken thread that ran across the whole lament—that AI will create a vast new underclass and it could be more debasing than poverty.