{"id":1262,"date":"2026-05-27T18:40:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T18:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arabnewsmonitor.com\/2026\/05\/27\/pope-used-ai-to-warn-about-dangers-of-ai-researcher\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T18:40:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T18:40:49","slug":"pope-used-ai-to-warn-about-dangers-of-ai-researcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/?p=1262","title":{"rendered":"Pope used AI to warn about dangers of AI \u2013 researcher"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leo XIV\u2019s treatise bears the signature signs of Antrhropic\u2019s Claude, Linch Zhang claims<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSignificant fractions\u201d<\/em> of Pope Leo XIV\u2019s recent encyclical on the dangers of artificial intelligence were actually written by artificial intelligence, analyst Linch Zhang claims.<\/p>\n

In the 42,000-word \u2018Magnifica Humanitas\u2019 (Magnificent Humanity), the pontiff warned of the growing, state-like power of Silicon Valley, the immorality of autonomous weapons, and the dangers of allowing AI to \u201cconstruct a new Tower of Babel\u201d<\/em> and reduce human beings to \u201ca resource to be used and exploited.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Despite its appeal for AI to be regulated and \u201cdisarmed,\u201d<\/em> large portions of \u2018Magnifica Humanitas\u2019 show some telltale signs of being written by AI, Zhang claimed in a blog post on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"Pope
Pope demands AI weapons be \u2018disarmed\u2019<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cPhrases and punctuation much more commonly used by AI are much more present in this papal encyclical than past encyclicals,\u201d<\/em> Zhang wrote, pointing to the document\u2019s use of em-dashes (127 instances, compared to 26 across four encyclicals by Pope Francis) and \u201ctricolons: a series of three parallel words, phrases, or clauses used for rhetorical effect.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Running the text through AI detector Pangram, Zhang found that some paragraphs were \u201cessentially 0% AI,\u201d<\/em> but others were between 40% and 100% AI-written. All four of Francis\u2019 encyclicals registered as entirely human-written, as did writings by Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II. Pangram also flagged the Italian version of the encyclical for AI, suggesting that artificial intelligence was not just used to translate the document.<\/p>\n

When Zhang\u2019s experiment was repeated by The Verge, roughly 46% of the encyclical was determined to be written by AI.<\/p>\n

The specific LLM (large language model) used to craft the text was likely Anthropic\u2019s Claude, Zhang claimed, citing his own familiarity with Claude and its overuse of certain words such as \u201cgenuinely.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n \"Analysis
\n Analysis of Pope Leo’s ‘Magnifica Humanitas’, shared by Linch Zhang, May 26, 2026<\/p>\n


\n \u00a9\u00a0 Linch Zhang <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The fact that certain paragraphs appear completely free of AI suggests that \u201csome senior Vatican officials heavily used AI assistance for this encyclical and many (probably including Pope Leo himself) didn\u2019t,\u201d<\/em> Zhang wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy tentative hypothesis is that Pope Leo does not approve of the AI usage in encyclicals, and plausibly was not even aware of significant AI usage in his own encyclical,\u201d<\/em> Zhang concluded.<\/p>\n

The Vatican has not commented on Zhang\u2019s claims. Nor has Anthropic, whose co-founder, Christopher Olah, delivered an address alongside the Pope on Monday.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leo XIV\u2019s treatise bears the signature signs of Antrhropic\u2019s Claude, Linch Zhang claims \u201cSignificant fractions\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}