The Babel Singularity: Why the Pope and Hard Sci-Fi Are Warning Us About the Same Tomorrow

When the Vatican and a gritty science fiction universe converge on an identical warning about artificial intelligence, maybe we should stop and listen.

On May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV stepped before the world at the Vatican and released humanity’s newest moral compass: his first papal encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”).

At 235 pages and over 42,000 words, it wasn’t a casual statement.

It was a direct, urgent, and deeply philosophical reckoning with our modern moment — specifically, the corporate sprint toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). And it broke tradition in a remarkable way: the Pope presented it personally alongside Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, making Leo XIV the first pontiff in history to personally unveil an encyclical to the world.

To the average reader, the Pope’s warning about a new “Tower of Babel” built on data and profit feels like timely cultural commentary. But to fans of futuristic, gritty science fiction, it reads like something else entirely. 

It reads like the prologue to a Neal Asher novel.

For the uninitiated, Asher’s Polity universe is a masterclass in cosmic body horror, where hyper-advanced artificial intelligences govern humanity, and terrifying rogue “Black AIs” manipulate biological life for their own inscrutable purposes. 

As we read the Vatican’s landmark text alongside Silicon Valley’s latest breakthroughs, we find ourselves standing in fascinating — and sobering — middle ground. The real terror of AGI isn’t a Hollywood robot rebellion. It is the very real threat of a hyper-complex, fragile digital network breaking in ways we can’t comprehend, and taking our global economy, daily lives, and human dignity down with it.

✦  ✦  ✦

Penny Royal and the Tombstone of Humanity

In Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV writes that technology is never morally neutral — it inherently takes on the traits of those who design, finance, and deploy it. He warns against a “dehumanizing ambition” where global networks are optimized solely for efficiency and profit, entirely detached from human morality.

In Asher’s Dark Intelligence, this exact corporate and military hubris gives birth to Penny Royal — a rogue, deadly, multi-faceted Black AI. 

It was a highly sophisticated military intelligence deployed during a desperate interstellar war, rushed into the field before its creators fully understood its emergent properties. Penny Royal wasn’t born evil. It broke.

It fractured in a way that human logic could neither predict nor comprehend, and it spent centuries afterward granting cybernetic “upgrades” to humans that secretly turned them into biomechanical monsters.

“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.”

— Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas

Look around us today. Tech giants are pouring staggering capital and processing power into AGI, operating on a “move fast and break things” ethos.

The Pope’s encyclical acts as a cultural brake pedal for this exact madness.

If humanity ultimately leaves behind a planetary tombstone, its epitaph may read exactly like Penny Royal’s origin story: We rushed the technology to beat our competitors, and it fractured in a way nobody could have imagined. 

The danger isn’t an AI waking up angry. 

It’s an AI breaking in a way that subtly, irreversibly warps our economic future and social fabric until we no longer recognize the world we built.

✦  ✦  ✦

The Prador Fallacy: The Danger of Total Rejection

Naturally, the terrifying prospect of broken AGI makes many people want to pull the plug entirely. Religious leaders, anxious parents, and tech-skeptics alike might read the Pope’s warnings and decide the only safe path is total digital isolation. 

This is where science fiction offers another crucial lesson — through a different faction in Asher’s universe: the Prador. The Prador are a terrifying species of space-faring, hyper-predatory giant crabs.

They possess overwhelming physical power and a ruthless, biological hierarchy.Yet despite their brutality, the Prador consistently lose their long-term conflicts against humanity. 

The reason is instructive: they had the opportunity to adopt artificial intelligence and consciously refused, viewing it with absolute disdain and fear. They chose raw, localized biological dominance instead.

Humanity survived by striking a complex, high-wire balance — partnering with AIs while fighting to maintain human sovereignty. 

The Prador’s ideological rejection of a powerful tool didn’t protect them.

It made them perpetually vulnerable to those who didn’t share their fear.

This is the brilliant nuance embedded in Magnifica Humanitas. Leo XIV is not telling Catholics, tech workers, or world leaders to become Luddites and smash the servers.

Total rejection of technology — the Prador mindset — leads to absolute vulnerability. The Pope explicitly acknowledges that AI has magnificent potential to heal, educate, and protect our world. 

The answer isn’t fearful retreat.
It’s a disciplined, courageous pursuit of balance.

✦  ✦  ✦

The “Enhanced Human” at the Dinner Table

The encyclical takes a remarkably sharp turn when it addresses the transhumanist dream: the vision of an “enhanced human being.” 

Magnifica Humanitas argues that treating our biological limits — illness, old age, vulnerability — as mere defects to be corrected reduces the grand mystery of the human soul to a corporate product to be optimized.

As Ascension Press’s commentary on the encyclical notes, the Pope teaches that human beings often flourish through their limitations, discovering wisdom, closeness to others, and encounter with God precisely in the places we are most fragile.

This isn’t just a warning for Silicon Valley bio-hackers.

It hits home for everyday families sitting around the dinner table. 

We are already living in an era where algorithms shape our jobs, our children’s attention spans, and our daily schedules. We are constantly pressured to optimize our lives — to behave less like flawed, empathetic human beings and more like efficient data processors.

In Asher’s universe, when humans accept the “monkey’s paw” upgrades of a rogue AI, they lose their humanity and become thralled, cybernetic puppets. 

In our world, the mechanism is subtler but the destination is the same. 

If we buy into the lie that human efficiency is the ultimate measure of worth, we don’t need implants to become machines. We will have successfully mechanized ourselves from the inside out.

✦  ✦  ✦

Choosing Jerusalem Over Babel

Pope Leo XIV frames our current technological crossroads with a beautiful biblical metaphor: our choice today is between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem. Between a power that claims to dominate the heavens, and a people who work together to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence.

We don’t need to wait for giant crab aliens to understand the stakes.

The warnings from both the Vatican and the depths of hard science fiction converge on the same truth: if we sacrifice our empathy, our accountability, and our human limitations on the altar of unchecked technological acceleration, the intelligence we create will inevitably hollow us out.

The narrow path forward requires that as our machines become more intelligent, we human beings fight twice as hard to remain profoundly, magnificently human. 

The Pope has laid out that path. 

The question is whether we have the wisdom
— and the humility —
to walk it.

SOURCES

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/25/europe/pope-leo-ai-encyclical-magnifica-humanitas-intl

Time: https://time.com/article/2026/05/25/pope-leo-encyclical-ai-magnifica-humanitas/

Ascension Press (Guide): https://ascensionpress.com/blogs/articles/a-complete-guide-to-pope-leo-s-encyclical-magnificent-humanitas

Ascension Press (Edition): https://ascensionpress.com/products/magnifica-humanitas

Vatican News: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-05/pope-leo-xiv-encyclical-magnifica-humanitas-ai.html

Ascension Press is publishing a special print edition of Magnifica Humanitas featuring a foreword by Arthur C. Brooks and an afterword by Fr. Mike Schmitz. Available for preorder at AscensionPress.com/AI.