The Pope’s new AI manifesto is a massive pitch for Open Source and Local Models

So by now everyone’s seen the headlines about Pope Leo XIV’s 150-page encyclical "Magnifica Humanitas." The mainstream media is framing it as a "war on AI," but if you read the entire text (I did), it’s surprisingly specific and some of the phrasing should be noted down. Especially the ones against tech monopolists. There’s a specific quote where he says: *"To disarm means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate... restoring it to the plurality of human cultures."* He’s calling to "disarm" AI from silicon valley monopolies and prevent big tech from using technical power as a default right to govern and for me. What was supposed to be an enciclica for many people sounds like an open-source manifesto cause that is literally the exact argument the open-source community has been making against closed-source frontier models for the last three years. What will the market reward? Looking at successful cases in the past, the community around a project can make a real difference. Firecrawl was launched first as open source, democratizing access to web data and removing the entry barriers that previously could only be overcome by big players with deals in place with big tech companies. Apart from the economic interests involved, the OpenAI-Musk case has brought this issue into the mainstream. What started as an open-source, non-profit organization openly talking about democratizing AI has gradually evolved into one of the most closed and commercially aggressive players in the industry. But other AI Labs are not different. All of them built their empire on top of public knowledge and then closed the door behind them..