Science fiction writers, especially North American ones, have devoted themselves to mapping the future of the West and the world, even building behavioral models of mechanical devices, most notably Isaac Asimov and his positronic robots. Finally, we're there: Asimov's centralized Multivac has transformed into Artificial Intelligence algorithms, and these are already moving toward merging into a single digital mind. And there's not much to be happy about... The advent of Artificial Intelligence, in fact, represents not a simple technical innovation, but a profound restructuring of productive forces and modes of social control, as well as, obviously, the way we investigate and learn. Computational potential and cognitive automation could, in a society free from exploitation and violence, relieve humanity of the burden of labor and expand the boundaries of shared knowledge. Unfortunately, within the capitalist trap, this technology is morphing into its opposite: a powerful device for the centralization of power, mass surveillance, and existential precarity. The real danger is not the science fiction dystopia of a rebel machine, like Skynet in the Terminator films, but the everyday reality of algorithms produced and used by Silicon Valley monopolies and state apparatuses to regulate work, shape consensus, and automate material and cognitive warfare.
It is within this scenario of radical transformation that Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas fits. Leo XIV, himself a mathematician but also with field experience in Latin America, demonstrates, within the limits of his beliefs, surprising clarity in denouncing technological hypocrisy, demystifying the idea that AI is a neutral tool. The Pope, it must be acknowledged, deserves credit for highlighting how technology incorporates precise power relations and economic interests from its very design, forcefully denouncing the danger of "digital slavery," launching the call to "disarm" AI, freeing it from monopolies to make it "habitable," proposing a global "educational alliance" to curb social isolation and prevent automated systems from reducing individuals to mere profit data, loudly demanding that human judgments remain supreme-all clearly in keeping with his worldview: the traditional family, home and church! However, the encyclical falls into the usual dead end of moralism and delegation: the belief that the technological monster can be tamed through ethical appeals to governments and severe state or supranational regulations. The papal vision remains clinging to the utopia of a capitalism with a human face and a state understood as a benevolent guardian. For us libertarians, this is dangerously naive: the state is not a neutral arbiter capable of imposing the common good, but rather capital's main business committee, hungry for those same algorithms to refine police control, border management, and the rationalization of domination.Asking the state to regulate the algorithm is asking the jailer to make the cell more comfortable; and imposed regulation is never a shield for the citizen, but rather the legal enclosure within which power institutionalizes its surveillance practices.
The glaring proof of this institutional hypocrisy is the recent Italian law on AI, complemented by the package of implementing decrees recently approved by the Council of Ministers. Behind the usual smokescreen of "human protection" and formal alignment with the European Union's AI Act, it effectively opens the door to state biometric control. Under the guise of "exceptions for national security and public order," police forces are given the green light to use real-time and a posteriori facial recognition. This is a dangerous move that bypasses the already lax European Union guidelines and draws heavy criticism for the risk of transforming public spaces into a perpetual digital panopticon. The bureaucratic guarantees promised by the government, such as the police commissioner's request or judicial authorization, are merely an anesthetic: the reality is the legalization of a digital apparatus capable of tracking and cataloging the bodies and identities of dissidents, marginalized individuals, and anyone who dares disturb the peace of capital. Indeed, for those who haven't noticed, the requirement for digital identity cards is completing the process of centralizing the population's sensitive data in private hands, including mandatory POS terminals for every transaction and even the ability to withdraw taxes directly from bank accounts, as is already the case with state employees and pensioners.
Furthermore, this algorithmic authoritarianism isn't limited to what happens on the streets, but aims to colonize the imagination and education of new generations through control of social media and direct involvement in schools.
Italian law mandates the massive introduction of AI into teaching, starting in elementary and high schools, touting it as modernization and "digital well-being." However, under the guise of personalized learning and technological literacy, it conceals a profound domestication agenda. The use of automatic systems to assess student performance or guide their educational paths introduces predictive classification from childhood, branding individuals based on behavioral standards established by private software companies, demoting schools from places of social interaction, conflict, and critical growth to training laboratories, where teachers become mere platform operators and students become involuntary providers of behavioral data. This is the triumph of instrumental rationality: accustoming young people to obedience to the invisible authority of the algorithm, normalizing continuous monitoring as a natural condition of existence.
What, then, should we do from a libertarian perspective? The answer cannot be nostalgic Luddism or a retreat into sterile primitivism, much less the expectation of a digital welfare system granted from above and freely manageable. The challenge lies in reappropriation and self-management: it is necessary to sabotage the logic of proprietary code and challenge the state surveillance apparatus through the development and support of federated digital infrastructures, free software, strong encryption, and self-managed networks outside of state and corporate control. We must free collective knowledge and data from the control of private property, practicing technological objection in schools and the self-management of knowledge in communities. Only by breaking the techno-political monopoly and placing technology back in the hands of self-managed communities can we transform algorithms from tools of control and oppression into vehicles of social emancipation and libertarian solidarity.
Emanuele Amodio
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/wp-content/uploads/giugno2026_compressed-1.pdf
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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