This weekend I spent some time reading Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical on Artificial Intelligence.
What surprised me was that I found myself thinking much less about technology than about power.
Perhaps because every major technological breakthrough ultimately does the same thing: it expands human power.
The steam engine expanded our power over physical labor.
Electricity expanded our power over time and distance.
The internet expanded our power over information.
Artificial Intelligence will expand our power over decision-making, knowledge and, increasingly, the way we shape reality itself.
Most of the current conversation focuses on the technology. Its possibilities, its risks, its speed of development.
Important conversations.
Yet as I was reading, I kept returning to a different question.
Not what AI will become.
But what we will become.
Because history suggests that increasing power does not automatically make us wiser.
It does not automatically make us more compassionate, more responsible or more aware.
Power amplifies.
That is what it does.
It amplifies the quality of mind that wields it.
The intentions behind it.
The fears behind it.
The maturity behind it.
And perhaps that is why I find the current AI debate both fascinating and incomplete.
We invest enormous amounts of energy into developing increasingly powerful technologies. Yet comparatively little attention is given to the development of the human beings who will use them.
In my own work, I rarely find myself wondering whether leaders have enough intelligence, expertise or capability.
The deeper question is often whether their inner development is keeping pace with the complexity, responsibility and influence they carry.
Not because they are flawed.
But because none of us were prepared for the scale of power that modern leadership, modern organizations and now modern technologies place into human hands.
The challenge, then, may not primarily be technological.
It may be developmental.
Can awareness grow as quickly as capability?
Can responsibility grow as quickly as influence?
Can wisdom grow as quickly as power?
Looking at the image of Pope Leo visiting sick children in a hospital, I was struck by the contrast.
One of the most influential people on the planet standing quietly beside someone who has none of that influence.
And yet, in that moment, what matters is not power.
It is presence.
Perhaps this is the deeper invitation hidden within the conversation about AI.
To remember that our technologies will ultimately reflect the consciousness of those who create and deploy them.
Fear scales.
Control scales.
But so do wisdom, compassion and service.
The future will certainly be shaped by increasingly intelligent machines.
But I suspect it will be shaped even more by the depth of humanity of those who lead them.