Artificial intelligence writes, translates, programs, diagnoses, calculates, and is beginning to make decisions that until very recently seemed exclusively human. It’s no wonder that people everywhere are asking: how far will it go?

Last Friday, Leo XIV, in Paris, suggested that perhaps we should shift the focus of our questions. During his visit to UNESCO, the Pope stated: “Communication has become much faster, but not necessarily more truthful; information is abundant, but it is not synonymous with wisdom. (…) Artificial intelligence amplifies this problem: although these systems can correlate data, they cannot answer questions about the meaning of human life, which is rooted in lived experience. Nevertheless, human beings cannot live without meaning. Meaning is the oxygen of the mind. For this reason, the challenges of communication, which are also always challenges of education, make the search for truth a matter of social justice and historical equity.”

Indeed, our era seems extraordinarily preoccupied with increasing the “intelligence” of machines and surprisingly uninterested in asking ourselves what we will use that “intelligence” for. We have access to more information than any previous generation, but does that make us wiser? We can communicate instantly with any place on the planet, but do we understand each other better? Algorithms know our habits, anticipate our tastes, and select much of what we see. Does this mean we are freer?

Let’s consider this carefully: an artificial intelligence can process thousands of books on love without ever having loved. It can analyze suffering without having suffered. It can describe death without knowing it will die. From this perspective, the real danger may not lie in machines becoming too similar to human beings, but in our conscious or unconscious desire to be like them: obsessed with speed, productivity, utility, and performance; capable of processing enormous amounts of information, but increasingly less prepared to ask ourselves what deserves to be loved, what constitutes a good life, or why some things shouldn’t be done even if they are technologically feasible.

Here, Leo XIV’s reflection takes on an unexpected political dimension. If distinguishing truth from falsehood is essential for the survival of societies, then access to truth is not merely a hobby for a few “intellectuals.” A society incapable of forming citizens who love the truth, and who, based on that love, become capable of civic participation and constructive criticism, ends up producing easily manipulated consumers of information.

That’s why the great debate about artificial intelligence cannot be left solely in the hands of engineers, businesspeople, or governments enamored with some form of techno-authoritarianism. A people can possess extraordinarily capable technologies and yet lose their way. And without that way, a society loses the very oxygen it needs to live and survive.