AI for humanity: The shared vision of PM Modi and Pope Leo XIV

At a time when there is relentless debate on the yays and nays of artificial intelligence, perhaps the most sanguine take on the matter has come from two entirely unconnected world leaders — Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pope Leo XIV. Both have argued, separately, that AI needs to focus on the humans who will use it rather than on considerations like commerce or competition. Tech gurus often talk about the fact that AI is an excellent servant but a very poor master. In other words, it works best when the goal it is working towards is an ethical one.

Earlier this year PM Modi explained this clearly when he said that “technology exists to serve humanity, not replace it”. Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, he explained that the core purpose of the summit was to “make AI human-centric rather than machine-centric, sensitive and responsible rather than reckless”. That ethical take on cutting-edge tech is similar to what the Pope mentions in his encyclical letter. ‘The Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence’ clearly states that the age of AI should bring human beings to the centre stage, not relegate them to the sidelines. “In the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanisation, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human,” wrote the Pope. He added that it was important to “lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity… the splendour of which no machine can ever replace.”

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At the heart of what both leaders are talking about is the need to make tech work for ethical reasons without losing sight of the fact that it is, in fact, a servant, not a master. Already, AI is being used in multiple fields to strengthen humanity’s search for truth. A couple of examples will illustrate this. Throughout history, the burning and pillaging of great libraries by iconoclastic forces has been a civilisational misfortune. Take Nalanda. When it was attacked by Bakhtiyar Khilji in 1193, its 9 million manuscripts burned for 3 months. Only a few thousand were saved and carried away to Tibet where they were meticulously translated from Sanskrit to Tibetan in canons like the Derge Kangyur. Others survived in translations like those of monk-traveller Xuanzang or in the works of Indian monks who travelled east all through the first millennium CE. Unfortunately, these fragments are now scattered in museums all over the world from Kolkata to Kathmandu, London to Lhasa. Now, a millennium after its brutal destruction, scholars and linguists are using AI to stitch these fragments together to collate and retrieve as much as possible of Nalanda’s libraries.

Nor is Nalanda the only example where AI is helping connect the civilisational dots. Recently, it also helped decode and read the ancient library of 800 papyrus scrolls collectively called the Herculaneum Papyri. These were completely carbonised into lumps of volcanic ash when Vesuvius erupted and destroyed Herculaneum in 79 CE. Under an international machine learning competition called the Vesuvius Challenge, these have now been codified, translated and made accessible online, allowing scholars and history lovers to delve deep into some of the oldest written manuscripts in human history.

This is what happens when tech retains its human focus. It’s about using human judgement to take a call on what AI can and should be made to work on. It’s responsible handling of a wild but wonderful servant. It’s what PM Modi calls serving humanity and what the Pope refers to as being “profoundly human”.

The distinction that both leaders make is in ensuring that tech is used for the common good. As the examples in Nalanda and the Vesuvius Challenge prove, AI can be used to improve human lives and increase knowledge. As the Pope said, tech has the “power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice”. In other words, it is a tool that can and does cut both ways. So, it is up to those who use it to make sure it is used ethically. That ties in with what the PM said at the India AI Impact Summit. “The guiding spirit, ‘Sarvajan Hitay, Sarvajan Sukhaye’, reflects India’s civilisational philosophy. The end goal of technology should be ‘Welfare for All, Happiness of All’.” Indeed, AI, he added at his opening address, “can help transform millions of lives by improving health, education, agriculture and so much more.”

Perhaps the best use that AI can be put to is to smash knowledge-gatekeeping by global elites. Tech can deepen divides if used to gatekeep access to knowledge. In this tech age, knowledge is power and the more accessible it is, the less concentrated decision-making will be. In a manner of speaking, this is neo-colonialism, where the commodity of the industrial revolution has made way for data and tech transfer. The huge crisis created due to chip shortages a couple of years ago proves this point. The semiconductor industry prioritised markets and product segments which led to bottlenecks in India and many other parts of the world. That’s why the Pope’s pronouncement, that “technology has the power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice”, finds resonance with what PM Modi has been talking about in multiple fora. “We have seen that in the last century the inequalities present in society had increased due to unequal access to technology,” he said at the GPAI Summit a couple of years ago. “Now we have to save the entire humanity from this kind of a blunder… The more inclusive the development journey of AI is, the more inclusive its results will be.”

At the heart of what is being talked about is Big Tech’s ability to monetise the latest technological advancements and gatekeep the benefits for a minuscule minority. Unless AI becomes a truly global partnership among nations, with the Global South being given equal footing, it will create the perfect platform for neo-colonialism, its benefits frittered away for the sake of commercial and geopolitical considerations. In his speech at the AI Action Summit in Paris last year, the PM elaborated on this danger. “We must also make the Global Partnership for AI truly global in nature. It should be more inclusive of the Global South and its priorities, concerns and needs,” he said.

What the Pope calls the common good of all humanity, PM Modi calls inclusion of the Global South. But in essence both leaders are talking about the same thing — that AI cannot become a monopoly of the already powerful.

Both leaders warn that AI can dehumanise and acknowledge there is fear of the technology ultimately reducing human beings to just “data points or raw material” which, as the PM said at his AI Impact Summit 2026 address, is something our society needs to safeguard against. Both leaders converge on the need to look at the humans in humanity rather than the logic of data-driven decision-making. “The primary choice is not between a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem,” said the Pope. PM Modi was even more categorical in his India AI Impact Summit speech this year: “Ethics in AI cannot be optional or limited. Profit must align with purpose.” The direction is identical: both leaders feel that AI must not be guided only by efficiency and profit but by values and responsibility.

Which brings us to the question that has already started stalking the tech sector: will AI take away human jobs and lead to large-scale unemployment? Like automation before it, the fallout in terms of job losses is a real and present concern. The Pope mentions this, saying that the “problem of unemployment is not merely economic: it affects the dignity of persons, the stability of families and the social fabric itself”. Therefore, “every introduction of automation and AI should be accompanied by verifiable measures to protect the employment, retraining and participation of workers”.

PM Modi has already talked about this at length. At the AI Action Summit in Paris last year, he said that “loss of jobs is AI’s most feared disruption. But history has shown that work does not disappear due to technology. Its nature changes and new types of jobs are created”. He went on to add in his speech at the India AI Impact Summit this year that we are now “entering an era where humans and intelligent systems co-create, co-work, and co-evolve”.

The ability to re-skill and re-boot will be critical to how well societies adapt to AI. That’s why the age of AI is as much a profound opportunity as it is a devastating disruption.

(Nandini Sen Gupta is a freelance writer and author of several books. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)