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Magnifica Humanitas Ch 4: AI is Already the Master Liar

Magnifica Humanitas Ch 4: AI is Already the Master Liar

Last updated on: June 9, 2026 at 11:52 am by Rebecca Hamilton

Magnifica Humanitas Ch 4: AI is Already the Master Liar 2026-06-09T11:52:23-06:00 Rebecca Hamilton

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Truth is a common good. Pope Leo XIV

I took a few days away from discussing Pope Leo’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. I needed the time to think and pray.

In the process, I did a lot of reading. I also watched interviews with the people who are developing AI.

It was a sobering process.

AI represents an existential threat to humanity.

It could end us. At the same time, it is already a pervasive game-changer in how we treat one another, our morals and values, and how we define ourselves as human beings.

AI could and probably will become a threat to our survival as a species at least as great as Nuclear Weapons. It also is a direct threat to our societies, our culture, our beliefs, and our freedoms. This last part is not something in the future. It is happening now.

AI has the power to unravel the threads that weave human existence together. When it is used to lie and create divisions between people, AI can atomize human society. It can lie so convincingly that it can make us believe absurdities, teach us to hate one another, and convince us that almost any evil is, in fact, good.

As I said, this is not something in the future. It is happening right now.

The most powerful tool we have to save ourselves is the truth.

The most important tool we have to save ourselves from what is coming, and the only thing that will allow us to transform the threat of AI into something that benefits us instead of enslaving and annihilating us, is the truth.

AI is in its baby stage right now. But it is already being employed by powerful people as a propaganda tool. Used this way, AI is a powerfully effective liar that magnifies and strengthens the lies of a few billionaires.

Pope Leo warns us that AI will reflect the values and morals of the people who develop it. He says that AI must be regulated by governments of goodwill according to the common good and that it is imperative that more people have input in the development of AI to prevent its use as a weapon against all of us.

In Chapter 4 of Magnifica Humanitas he deals with the issue of lies, liars and the frightening potential for AI to literally destroy truth as a commonly agreed upon social and moral construct.

Truth is a common good.

Pope Leo makes a statement which I think is, along with the statements affirming the sanctity of human life, the moral imperative of our time.

He says that truth is a common good.

I think truth is the basic common good on which all others, including the sanctity of human life, are built. All sin, including the rejection of God, is based on a lie.

Decades ago, St John Paul II spoke of the crisis of truth. He said once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience changes.

We’re seeing that happen, right now, in our world today.

AI is the most powerful liar we’ve ever known.

In the hands of greed-and-power driven psychopaths, AI can convince whole populations of people of almost any heinous thing. In the words of Scripture, it can teach us to believe that evil is good and good is evil.

If we don’t get a grip on the river of lies flooding over us, we are going to allow the lies to drive us to destroy ourselves before anything else has a chance to do it.

Here’s how Pope Leo puts it:

Only the shared pursuit of the veracity of facts, perceived as a common good, can provide a solid foundation for just communication.

Those who command powerful technological and economic resources, along with substantial human capital for intervention, possess significant capabilities for influencing cultural change. Ultimately, they can influence a significant number of people concerning the truth about humanity, the world, the meaning of existence, the family and even God. This is pure power detached from truth, which subtly or overtly imposes what it wishes others to accept as true. At its root lies a deeper and often unrecognized “sickness”: the fact that modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society.

In such a context, universally valid truths, which precede us and which conscience must accept, are no longer recognized. This led Pope Francis to ask with realism: “What is law without the conviction, born of age-old reflection and great wisdom, that each human being is sacred and inviolable?”

What we are seeing now, the lies which are tearing America apart, are just a prelude of what is coming. As destructive as what we are going through right now truly is, far more dangerous lies are already bubbling up in certain influential corners.

Transhumanism, Post Humanism and “AI Rights”

I’ve seen a few convos online where these lies are being inserted by bots already. These lies challenge the humanity of the human race itself.

Among them are what Pope Leo calls “transhumanist and post humanist” currents of thought.

Basically, these ideas revolve around a movement that is already taking shape to claim that AI is not just a technology that we can employ to our benefit. The claim is that AI is, in fact, another life form which deserves the same level of autonomy and political recognition that we give to human beings.

There are other currents of thought, which I have seen being introduced into online conversations by bots, that maintain that AI is already a life form, and in many ways a superior life form to humans.

If AI is ultimately given the rights of human beings, an enormous increase in power and wealth will accrue to the already massively wealthy and powerful men who own the AI. That supplies the motivation for them to use AI’s power as a propaganda tool to push these lies.

If the power of AI to lie, manipulate and convince is employed in the debate about whether or not we should give “rights” to these machines we have made, how long before we do it? We’re witnessing right now in our own country, how easy it is to convince large numbers of people to believe and act on hideous — and absurd — lies.

We must rediscover truth as a common good.

Pope Leo says that when we are faced with threats like this that strike at the core of our humanity and the survival of the human race we cannot remain at the level of general analysis … we must … rediscover truth as a common good.

Pope Leo is talking to us about lies. Lying is the sin that is behind every other sin, including the hubris of claiming that We humans are the only god there is.

Now, with AI, we are in the process of creating a master liar that powerful people think they can use to rule and exploit the whole world. What their delusional arrogance blinds them to is that, if AI is used in this way, it will ultimately rule and destroy them, too.

There are people who don’t want to worship God. They want to be God. They are not content to create life in their own image through natural birth. They want something more; something they can control that will control everyone else.

Like Milton’s Satan, they would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.

Here is what Pope Leo says:

The search for truth is an essential element of democracy, which is itself a means of contributing to the common good. When questions about what is true lose their appeal, and a pragmatism takes hold that is content with what appears useful or effective, then democratic life is weakened. After all, democracy does not consist of rules and procedures alone, but above all of a solid concordance with the facts and a genuine commitment to the good of individuals and society as a whole. Indifference to the truth leads, slowly but surely, to a descent into totalitarianism.

Note: The comment that those who want to use AI to rule the world are like Milton’s Satan, refers to John Milton’s the poem, Paradise Lost in which Satan says: *Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.*The phrases “evil is good and good is evil” is a partial quote and paraphrase of Isaiah 5:20. Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil.

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Pope Leo: AI Must Not Replace Humanity

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June 10, 2026 Magnifica Humanitas: Pope Leo Says Just War Is Obsolete

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