Pope Leo continues to probe artificial intelligence (AI) along the lines of contemplation. Yesterday he gave an address to participants in a conference on Artificial Intelligence and Care of our Common Home, and after questioning who controls this technology and who gets to benefit from it, he had this to say:

What does it mean to be human in this moment of history?

Human beings are called to be co-workers in the work of creation, not merely passive consumers of content generated by artificial technology. Our dignity lies in our ability to reflect, choose freely, love unconditionally and enter into authentic relationships with others. Artificial intelligence has certainly opened up new horizons for creativity, but it also raises serious concerns about its possible repercussions on humanity’s openness to truth and beauty, and capacity for wonder and contemplation.

This intervention is far from an isolated one. It is in continuity with Leo’s previous focus on a paragraph in a document of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) that introduces a distinction between contemplativeness and usefulness in the context of AI. Ultimately—and this is no surprise for an Augustinian pope—the principle being referenced comes from the saintly Bishop of Hippo.

The placing of wonder alongside contemplation is perhaps a developing theme of Pope Leo’s. After all, the Bishop of Rome recently told youth in the U.S.:

AI will not judge between what is truly right and wrong. And it won’t stand in wonder, in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.

Wonder connects to beauty for the U.S.-Peruvian pontiff. Arguably, then, situating wonder and contemplation in a single human capacity is reflective of the teaching of Pope Leo’s predecessor on our singular aesthetic and contemplative sense. Indeed, Leo knows and appreciates this magisterial teaching. Only last month he spoke of how “Pope Francis, with the Encyclical Laudato si’, showed us the extreme need for a contemplative gaze,” and at his first Mass for the Care of Creation, he’d said:

Only a contemplative gaze can change our relationship with created things and lead us out of the ecological crisis caused by the breakdown of relationships with God, with our neighbors, and with the earth, due to sin…

Everything is finding itself tied tightly together. In the magisterium of Pope Francis, contemplation is a matter not of the intellect alone or of loving alone, but a matter of beauty, i.e., an envelopment in and appreciation of someone/something as an end in themselves/itself—which dovetails with Leo’s mention of “humanity’s openness to truth and beauty, and capacity for wonder and contemplation.” All these things need to be discussed together, find a home together, address what it means to be human together.

I’ve been saying for years that Papa Francisco was perhaps the most important pope for contemplatives since Gregory the Great. He offered to the Church a reordering and consolidation of our understanding of Christian contemplation (which Leo has been content to draw on when talking to contemplatives). This was certainly an extraordinary gift to accept with gratitude. But it’s starting to look like it was a lot more. It was timely. The theology of contemplation can play a key role in our interpretation of the signs of the times, the social scripts of AI, and the patterns of domination and vulnerability in our world today.

There will surely be more questioning of what it means to be human—homo contemplativus who wonders before the truth and beauty of God’s creation—at this moment of history. May we have ears to hear and eyes to see.