There are moments in life when we realise that we can’t just carry on as before. Something has shifted. We need to talk.

Pope Leo XIV recently published a letter naming the new realities we face globally because of the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence.

His concern is that new technologies risk undermining human dignity. Automated systems already make decisions about individuals’ lives. Mass redundancies could follow.

Global inequalities are increasing exponentially. Data centres place vast new demands on energy and water supplies. Autonomous Fighting Vehicles already exist.

Could AI soon decide to start a war? Most fundamentally, we risk understanding ourselves in terms of computers instead of seeing AI as a servant of humanity, with all our hopes and dreams.

Pope Leo offers us two images from the Bible – the famous Tower of Babel story of self-assertion, which ends in chaos and isolation, and a less well-known image from the story of Nehemiah, who gets the whole population working together to rebuild the ruined city walls and renew community life.

Which path will we choose – isolation or cooperation?

We need to talk – and we need to work together to build a future worthy of what Pope Leo calls our ‘Magnificent Humanity’.