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When I first started writing on technology and personhood fifteen years ago, very few scholars were reading the signs of the times. Today, discussions and books on AI dominate our attention, ranging across a spectrum from fear to hesitation to cautious integration. Within the Catholic Church, Pope Francis raised early concerns about a technocratic paradigm that risked producing radical economic disparity and “deserts of interior desolation.” The 2025 Note Antiqua et Nova, issued jointly by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture and Education—and approved by Francis shortly before his death—continues this line of thinking. Technology is part of humanity’s “collaboration with God in perfecting creation” (para. 37) and can “contribute positively to the...