Report Summary
1. The Vatican and AI: Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas treats AI as a tool that must protect human dignity. It warns that leaving AI governance solely to markets undermines dignity and urges public law, participation and ethical oversight.
2. Taxing AI Productivity: Senator Elizabeth Warren argues that AI success should be shared. She proposes taxing data centre energy use and closing tax loopholes to fund healthcare, education and jobs. This would reverse the current incentive that rewards automation over hiring.
3. Canada’s Bill C‑22: Apple and Meta contend Canada’s proposed Bill C‑22 could require backdoors in encryption. They say the bill’s sweeping powers could let the government force companies to break encryption and install spyware, undermining user security.
4. Pinsent Masons refers itself to the SRA for AI misuse: An Insolvency and Companies Court judge publicly admonished international law firm Pinsent Masons after a junior lawyer relied on AI to produce hallucinated legal citations and an inaccurate explanatory letter. The firm apologised and referred itself and three solicitors to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
5. Case Note [Meta Platforms Case, 3 June 2026]: The EU General Court annulled the European Commission’s designation of Meta’s Marketplace as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act because the European Commission relied on outdated data and gave insufficient reasoning. Facebook Messenger remains a gatekeeper.
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Lead Story
The Vatican Warns Against Leaving AI to Market Power
On 25 May 2026, Pope Leo XIV signed his first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. This appears to be a radical policy intervention marking the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII’s historic letter on workers’ rights during the industrial revolution.
Magnifica Humanitas approaches AI primarily as a tool and says its purpose is to protect human dignity.
The encyclical asserts that AI must serve humanity rather than allow markets and private platforms to determine its direction. To emphasise the moral continuity with the industrial era, Pope Leo compares today’s concentration of data and computing power to the nineteenth‑century concentration of capital and factories.