The Pope’s new letter on AI moved us and totally aligned with the tools and conversations we have at Abundance Solutions about responsible AI. Here's why.

If you haven't already seen it, Pope Leo XIV recently released Magnifica Humanitas, an encyclical on safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence. (Link in comments.)

We read it with a deep sense of recognition.

True, not every business leader will approach AI from the same (or any) religious tradition.

But the questions raised in the letter are the questions every business owner, educator, parent, technologist, and community leader is being asked to face right now:

• What kind of future are we building?
• What does technology make possible?
• What does it make easier?
• What does it make harder to see?
• And how do we make decisions now that will still seem wise when our children and grandchildren are living with the results?

That last question is where ethics begins.

Ethics Versus Morals: What to Do When We Don't Yet Have Rules?

In his book AI and Ethics: Adopting AI Technology Without Losing Our Humanity, Abundance Solutions' founder, Joe Sessions, observes the simple, but powerful, distinction between morals and ethics:

A moral code is the set of rules, standards, and agreements a society or group uses to guide behavior. Often stemming from societal trial-end-error, these are the expectations we inherit, teach, and enforce. They tell us what is acceptable, what is unacceptable, and what consequences follow when those standards are violated.

Ethics goes deeper.

Ethics asks us to personally examine whether our choices lead toward long-term survival, flourishing, and well-being for ourselves and others.

A moral code may tell us what the current rules are. Ethics asks whether we are self-evolving the rules that will help life continue well.

That distinction matters enormously in a time of rapid technological change.

When a new technology arrives, society rarely has a fully developed moral code ready to govern it. The tool appears first. The rules come later.

In between, people have to think.

They have to discern.

They have to ask what the tool is for, whom it serves, what it may damage, what it may liberate, and what kind of people we want to become through using it.

The Printing Press: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of New Tech

The printing press is a useful example.

It famously made The Bible more widely available. It expanded literacy, accelerated learning, and helped ordinary people engage directly with ideas that had previously been harder to access.

Undoubtedly, the printing press brought profound good.

However, the same technology also made it easier to spread false, inflammatory, and slanderous material.

Over time, societies developed moral agreements around the use of mass communication: We created standards for journalism. We developed laws around libel and slander. We built expectations for attribution, accountability, and public truth-telling.

The technology opened a door.

We didn't yet have a moral code. But ethical reflection helped society decide what kind of room we were walking into.

AI Without a Moral Code: Will Ethics Govern the Ungoverned?

AI is creating a similar moment, only faster.

Artificial intelligence is already changing how people write, learn, hire, diagnose, summarize, design, search, sell, communicate, and make decisions. It is entering classrooms, workplaces, clinics, churches, homes, courtrooms, and small businesses.

This is why the Pope’s letter felt so important to us.

Like us, he does not treat AI as a novelty or a passing business trend. He addresses AI as part of a much larger human question.

Technology has always been one way humanity extends itself into the world. We build tools to cultivate the earth, reduce suffering, educate children, heal bodies, feed communities, protect families, and make work more fruitful.

That is one of the most hopeful things about human beings:

We make.

We improve.

We imagine.

We solve.

But every tool that increases human capacity also increases human responsibility.

A tool that helps us communicate can also help us manipulate. A tool that helps us organize work can also reduce workers to data points. A tool that helps us learn can also help us avoid the work of understanding.

A tool that helps us scale can also scale our blind spots.

This is why AI is naturally forcing us to examine what it means to be human.

What's Next for Humanity and Responsible AI?

If a machine can produce fluent language, what is the value of a human voice?

If a machine can summarize information, what is the value of judgment?

If a machine can generate images, plans, strategies, and code, what is the value of imagination?

If a machine can imitate empathy, what is the value of actual care?

These questions can feel unsettling. They can also be clarifying.

Because AI does not make humanity less important. But it might raise questions of living up to our humanity.

The Pope’s letter speaks to this with unusual breadth. It calls for technology to serve human dignity, decent work, truth, community, peace, and the common good. It asks us to consider not only what AI can do, but what kind of world it helps create.

That is the ethical question.

And these responsible AI questions belong to more people than software engineers.

Business owners, educators, parents, and community leaders are all making ethical choices when we decide how we want to measure progress, and how we value humans.

At Abundance Solutions, we have pledged to implement AI responsibly.

We believe small businesses, schools, nonprofits, and organizations of every size should have access to powerful tools. We believe AI can reduce administrative burden, improve communication, support training, preserve institutional knowledge, and free people to do more meaningful work.

We also believe the human person must remain at the center.

The arrival of AI gives this generation a rare opportunity to create a more ideal future!

That future belongs to anyone who still believes technology should serve human flourishing.

Joe’s book, AI and Ethics: Adopting AI Technology Without Losing Our Humanity, (available on Amazon), was written in that spirit.

It is an invitation to think clearly, act responsibly, and remain deeply human in a time of extraordinary technological change.

We hope you’ll read it.

And more than that, we hope you’ll join the conversation.

Because the future of AI will not be shaped only by what the technology can do: it will be shaped by what human beings decide it should do.