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# Pope's AI Encyclical is Really About Power, Not Technology
- URL: https://adjacent.media/signals/popes-ai-encyclical-is-really-about-power-not-technology/
- Published: 2026-05-26T16:13:38.000Z
- Updated: 2026-05-26T16:13:38.000Z
- Description: The Vatican’s intervention on artificial intelligence reasserts moral authority over concentrated power and technological elites who’ve sidelined traditional sources of institutional legitimacy.
- Author: Jonathan Greene
- Tags: #signal, theme-culture, regulation/policy, social movements, media

Source: [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/25/the-popes-ai-encyclical-isnt-really-about-ai/?ref=adjacent.media)

The Vatican's intervention on artificial intelligence reasserts moral authority over concentrated power and technological elites who've sidelined traditional sources of institutional legitimacy. By framing AI as symptomatic of deeper governance failures—monopoly concentration, democratic erosion, unaccountable expertise—the Church positions itself as arbiter of values that secular regulators and tech companies have abdicated. Institutional critiques of tech power are increasingly coming from religious, academic, and governmental sources rather than from within tech itself, indicating a legitimacy crisis at Silicon Valley that extends beyond product-specific scandals.