Pope Leo XIV warns AI could fuel \u2018antihuman ideologies\u2019 in medicine Pope Leo XIV warned Monday that artificial intelligence could exacerbate \u201cantihuman ideologies\u201d in medicine as Catholic doctors and moral theologians raise alarms about the future of AI in health care. In a message on Nov. 10 to an international congress on \u201cArtificial Intelligence and Medicine: The Challenge of Human Dignity,\u201d hosted by the Pontifical Academy for Life, the pope said that ensuring \u201ctrue progress\u201d in medicine depends on keeping the dignity of every human at the forefront. \u201cIt is easy to recognize the destructive potential of technology and even medical research when they are placed at the service of antihuman ideologies,\u201d Leo XIV said. Leo added that those responsible for integrating AI into medicine must remember that \u201chealth care professionals have the vocation and responsibility to be guardians and servants of human life, especially in its most vulnerable stages.\u201d \u201cIndeed, the greater the fragility of human life, the greater the nobility required of those entrusted with its care,\u201d he said. The pope\u2019s message came a day after another of his statements on the ethics of AI led to controversy on the social media platform X. Tech billionaire Marc Andreessen posted a mocking reference to Leo\u2019s call on the AI industry \u201cto develop systems that reflect justice, solidarity, and a genuine reverence for life.\u201d After a pileup of critical replies, Andreessen apparently deleted his own post. Pro-life concerns over AI billing in medical insurance The pope\u2019s remarks on Monday come amid growing concern among Catholic doctors about how artificial intelligence could shape access to care and respect for human dignity in health care systems worldwide. Dr. Kathleen Berchelmann, a pediatrician and founder of My Catholic Doctor, a telehealth network that connects families seeking Catholic care with like-minded providers, told CNA she is alarmed by how insurance companies are deploying AI in the U.S. She said AI-driven billing systems are \u201cfurther pushing pro-life health care providers out of the insurance market to the self-pay market, reducing access to pro-life health care in America.\u201d \u201cWhat I see in AI and health care is a technology arms race,\u201d Berchelmann said. \u201cAnd unfortunately, the people with the big money have higher tech, and \u2026 that\u2019s the insurance companies. That\u2019s United Health Care, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, Elevance Health, Aetna, Cigna. \u2026 These are the companies that are putting billions into utilization management, which means denials.\u201d On Oct. 1, Aetna and Cigna implemented AI-automated payments nationwide, a move that has led to what critics call \u201cdowncoding,\u201d where insurers automatically downgrade doctors\u2019 claims to lower reimbursement levels without reviewing visit details. \u201cIn particular, in pro-life health care, we\u2019re seeing automatic downcoding because restorative reproductive medicine, which is health care that finds root cause of infertility and treats the root cause, takes more time than a brief workup and a referral to IVF,\u201d Berchelmann said. \u201cThat extended time requires a higher coding. But if I do a real quick workup, I can build a lower code for that. So the predictive AI doesn\u2019t recognize that I\u2019m doing a better job in finding root cause of disease,\u201d she added. Berchelmann said she sees \u201ctremendous potential for AI in terms of diagnostic capacity and clinical use\u201d and hopes predictive models will demonstrate that \u201cpro-life health care is so much cheaper than IVF.\u201d But for now, she said, \u201cinsurance companies, employers paying for health care, and pharmaceutical companies with insurance, are all heavily using AI to not pay for your care.\u201d In his message, Pope Leo acknowledged the influence of economic interests in health care and technology. \u201cGiven the vast economic interests often at stake in the fields of medicine and technology, and the subsequent fight for control, it is essential to promote a broad collaboration among all those working in health care and politics that extends well beyond national borders,\u201d the pope said. AI not a substitute for \u2018human encounter\u2019 in medicine Pope Leo underlined that \u201ctechnological devices must never detract from the personal relationship between patients and health care providers.\u201d \u201cIf AI is to serve human dignity and the effective provision of health care, we must ensure that it truly enhances both interpersonal relationships and the care provided,\u201d he said. Leo described the new technological advancements brought by AI as \u201cmore pervasive\u201d than those brought by the industrial revolution, noting their potential to alter \u201cour understanding of situations and how we perceive ourselves and others.\u201d \u201cWe currently interact with machines as if they were interlocutors, and thus become almost an extension of them,\u201d he said. \u201cIn this sense, we not only run the risk of losing sight of the faces of the people around us but of forgetting how to recognize and cherish all that is truly human.\u201d The three-day Vatican conference on AI and medicine, running Nov. 10\u201312, is one of several in recent months addressing the ethics of AI \u2014 an issue Pope Leo XIV has signaled will be a priority in his pontificate. At the Builders AI Forum in Rome last week, which addressed the challenge of AI for Catholics and Catholic institutions in a variety of fields, medical school professors, health care company executives, insurance company directors, medical chaplains, and entrepreneurs in the field came together to discuss and debate the future of AI in Catholic health care. Louis Kim, the former vice president of personal systems and AI at HP, shared that the consensus among these professionals at the end of the forum was that \u201cAI may assist but must never substitute for human encounter [in Catholic health care] and must remain clearly identifiable as non-human so that the pastoral and sacramental integrity of care is preserved.\u201d Daniel J. Daly, executive director of the Center for Theology and Ethics in Catholic Health and an associate professor of moral theology at Boston College, told CNA he is concerned that if AI models used in Catholic hospitals are only trained to maximize \u201cefficiency and profit\u201d it could lead to \u201ca massive failure for Catholic health care.\u201d \u201cWhat I worry about is that what could happen in health care is that AI replaces that embodied witness to the kingdom of God,\u201d Daly said. \u201cThat can never happen in Catholic health care, because Catholic health care is not just about medicine. It\u2019s also about Jesus Christ and witnessing to his healing ministry that we see in the Scripture.\u201d \u201cI think the most important thing is that whatever the AI does, that it frees us to do the works of mercy, it doesn\u2019t free us from the works of mercy,\u201d he added. \u201cThat is, it doesn\u2019t replace the embodied care and ministerial care that we provide through medicine.\u201d This article was originally published by CNA. Receive the most important news from EWTN Vatican via WhatsApp. It has become increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social media. Subscribe to our free channel today EWTN Vatican on WhatsApp Courtney Mares Would you like to receive the latest updates on the Pope and the Vatican Receive articles and updates from our EWTN Newsletter. 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