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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 24, 2025 / 17:53 pm (CNA).
This week the White House released its plan for artificial intelligence (AI) in the United States, which aims "to achieve global dominance in AI" and promote "human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people."
The plan comes as Catholic leaders continue to urge developers to exercise caution when growing and refining the new technology.
The government's "Winning the AI Race: America's AI Action Plan" identifies more than 90 federal policy actions within the categories of "accelerating innovation, building American AI infrastructure, and leading in international diplomacy and security."
The White House announcement laid out the key policies the AI plan will focus on, including sharing technology with allies around the world, developing data centers, and stripping away red tape around AI development.
The government will also focus on "updating federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias."
Catholic perspective on AI
Charles Camosy, an author and professor of moral theology and bioethics at The Catholic University of America, told EWTN News this week that people need to be "extremely, extremely careful" when using AI, particularly as it continues to advance in the U.S. and abroad.
Camosy told "EWTN News In Depth" that "we have to create a culture that shapes AI to serve human beings, not the other way around."
In the midst of AI expanding, Camosy said he is "100%" sure that Pope Leo XIV is aware of the dangers that come with it. Camosy said addressing AI could be the "most ambitious and enduring project" of the pope's legacy.
At the Vatican in June, Pope Leo said that AI "will certainly be of great help to society, provided that its employment does not undermine the identity and dignity of the human person and his or her fundamental freedoms."
The pope added: "It must not be forgotten that artificial intelligence functions as a tool for the good of human beings, not to diminish them, not to replace them."
"He took the name [Leo XIV] to connect himself to Leo XIII, who himself was dealing with the industrial revolution of the late 19th century," Camosy said.
"So he's imagined himself in a situation where he's saying, 'We're undergoing right now a similar technological change that is going to totally transform the culture. How do we respond?'"
"The Church is certainly not going to be able to control AI," Camosy said. But, he said, Leo XIV will be able to draw from what Leo XIII articulated during the industrial revolution to say "it's important to have developments of technology, but workers have rights."
If AI's presence does become too large within the work realm, Camosy said, "we won't even think of ourselves as people who need to work or want to work. But as so many popes have said over the years, through Catholic social teaching, work is an integral part of the human experience."
"It's how we mirror, in some ways, God's creative work. And how we reflect God's image in precisely that way."
Camosy also highlighted the risks of AI chatbots, which he said can be "super dangerous" because sometimes "people can't tell the difference often when they're talking to a human being or a chatbot. And to the extent that we have any sort of confusion about that, that's really super worrisome."
"We are flesh and blood, made in the image and likeness of God with a soul that reflects a relationship that can't possibly be present in a chatbot," Camosy said.
Humans must be careful with AI and chatbots because they can "absolutely" be a source of evil, especially as they can cause "horrible delusions" to some users.
"We don't have to go into some sort of metaphysical understanding of the relationship between the demonic and chatbots to say, 'Of course it can be a portal for evil.'"
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has also urged the importance of AI upholding human dignity as it progresses.
"AI is a tool that, when informed by sound moral principles, can help overcome many of life's obstacles and improve the human condition," the bishops told Congress earlier this year.
"But this technology should supplement what human beings do, not replace them or their moral judgments."
"As pastors entrusted with the care of human life and dignity, we urge lawmakers to heed the call of our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, to help ensure that AI is developed with responsibility and discernment so that it may truly benefit every person," the bishops said.
With the technology progressing at a rapid rate, Camosy said: "Thank God we have the Holy Father we do."
The Catholic Church, he said, "may be the sole countercultural voice speaking out against some of these trends."
