10/05/2026
A Governor, a President and a Pope: Who Will Define the Human Future of AI?
These days, you cannot turn a corner—figuratively, and increasingly literally—without artificial intelligence hitting you squarely in the face. AI is writing, researching, diagnosing, hiring, firing, teaching, designing, composing, monitoring and creating. It is transforming law firms and hospitals, Hollywood studios and universities, human resources departments and government agencies.
At the same time, it is forcing us to answer questions that only a few years ago sounded like science fiction. Should a machine help decide who gets hired or fired? Can a lawyer delegate professional judgment to an algorithm? How much authority should AI have over medical decisions? Who owns your face and voice when technology can reproduce both almost perfectly?
Remarkably, this debate can now be viewed through three very
different figures: a Governor, a President and a Pope.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a broad package of laws placing new guardrails around artificial intelligence. President
Donald Trump and his administration have pursued a different approach, emphasizing American technological dominance, innovation and a more uniform national regulatory framework. And thousands of miles away in Rome, Pope Leo XIV has issued Magnifica Humanitas, an extraordinary encyclical examining artificial intelligence through perhaps the most fundamental lens of all: preservation of the human person.
Three leaders. Three institutions. Three very different perspectives. Yet all are confronting essentially the same question: As artificial intelligence becomes more powerful, who remains in control—the human being or the machine?
Sacramento Versus Washington
The emerging confrontation between Sacramento and Washington is difficult to miss. The Trump administration has framed AI substantially around innovation, national competitiveness and America's position in the global AI race. The White House has also warned that a patchwork of state regulations could inhibit innovation and has favored greater national uniformity.
California is moving aggressively in the other direction. Newsom argues that AI should expand opportunity without doing so at the expense of workers and families. His administration is positioning California not merely as the birthplace of much of modern technology, but as a potential national model for regulating it.
The rhetoric has occasionally become pointed. Newsom recently quipped, “Super intelligence is clearly not coming from the White House,” while announcing California's latest AI measures.
Put the political theater aside, however, and there is an enormously important policy debate underneath it. Washington emphasizes speed, scale, innovation and international competitiveness. Sacramento is emphasizing guardrails, transparency, professional responsibility and human oversight.
Those goals need not be mutually exclusive. The difficult question is where the line should be drawn: How much regulation is necessary before protection begins inhibiting innovation—and how little regulation is permissible before innovation begins eroding human judgment, responsibility and accountability? California has now placed itself squarely in the middle of that debate.
California: From Technology Laboratory to Regulatory Laboratory
There is a certain historical symmetry here. California has spent generations helping lead technological advancement. Silicon Valley helped produce the semiconductor revolution, personal computing, the modern internet economy, social media and now some of the world's most important artificial intelligence companies.
California is therefore attempting something particularly consequential: the state that helped build the technological future is now trying to write some of the rules governing it.
The breadth of its newest AI legislation is striking. These laws are not simply aimed at Silicon Valley. They reach employment, the legal profession, healthcare, education, privacy, workplace surveillance, digital replicas, deepfakes, biotechnology and AI transparency.
Consider employment. SB 947, the No Robo Bosses Act, requires meaningful human involvement in certain disciplinary and termination decisions involving automated decision systems. SB 951 addresses technological displacement by expanding notice requirements when AI contributes to certain layoffs or other workforce reductions. AB 1331 and AB 1883 address workplace surveillance and particularly sensitive forms of employee information.
The underlying concept is straightforward: technology may assist employers, but responsibility for consequential decisions affecting human livelihoods should not simply disappear into an algorithm.
Lawyers, Doctors—and Humans—Still Required
For those of us practicing law, SB 574 deserves particular attention.
The legislation addresses lawyers' use of AI, including confidentiality, verification of AI-generated material and the continuing obligation to exercise professional judgment.
AI can be an extraordinary legal tool. Lawyers are already using it for research, document review, discovery, drafting, case analysis and litigation strategy. Properly deployed, it can make us faster and more efficient.
But the lawyer remains the lawyer. The machine does not possess a bar license. It does not owe a fiduciary duty. It cannot be professionally disciplined. And “the AI did it” cannot become an acceptable answer when something goes wrong.
The same principle is emerging in healthcare, where California's legislation addresses the relationship between AI tools and professional medical judgment. Other measures tackle digital replicas and deepfakes, AI-generated content, biotechnology and transparency.
The common denominator is remarkably consistent: Use the machine. Benefit from the machine. Embrace the machine. But do not surrender the human.
That is why AI is no longer simply “technology law.” It is employment law, healthcare law, legal ethics, privacy law, education law, intellectual property, entertainment law and civil rights law. Increasingly, AI law is simply becoming the law.
From Sacramento to Rome
And this brings us to the Pope—with an amusing historical bridge from Sacramento to the Vatican. Sacramento itself takes its name from the Catholic sacraments, seven sacred rites through which Catholics believe God communicates His grace: Baptism, entry into the Christian faith; Confirmation, full initiation into the Church; the Eucharist or Holy Communion, the center of Catholic worship; Reconciliation or Confession, seeking forgiveness for sins; Anointing of the Sick, prayer and spiritual comfort during serious illness and sometimes near death; Holy Orders, ordination to the priesthood and other ordained ministry; and Matrimony, marriage understood as a sacred lifelong covenant.
California’s map reflects its Spanish Catholic heritage, with names such as San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz. Sacramento derives from the Spanish sacramento, meaning “sacrament,” while the Sacramento River was historically known as Río de los Sacramentos—the River of the Sacraments.
So perhaps the journey from Governor Newsom’s desk to Pope Leo’s Vatican is not quite as improbable as it sounds. One could even joke that Sacramento was Catholic much long before it became California’s capital. Newsom presumably was not consulting Pope Leo while signing California’s AI legislation, but the parallels between the principles emerging from Sacramento and those articulated in Magnifica Humanitas are difficult to ignore.
Enter Pope Leo
Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the
Time of Artificial Intelligence is obviously not legislation. It is a theological and moral document grounded in Catholic social teaching. But Pope Leo does not portray technology as humanity's enemy. His concern is what happens when technology ceases serving human beings and human beings begin serving technology. At the center of the encyclical is a deceptively simple proposition: human intelligence, conscience and freedom must continue to guide technological innovation and determine its purposes and limits. Compare that with California's new laws.
The Pope warns about the dignity of work and technological displacement; California addresses AI-related workforce displacement. The Pope discusses automated surveillance and threats to worker agency; California regulates workplace surveillance and automated employment decisions. The Pope addresses truth in an age when AI can blur the distinction between authentic and manipulated images and information; California is strengthening protections involving deepfakes and digital replicas.
Pope Leo also emphasizes that good intentions alone are insufficient. He discusses the need for legal frameworks, oversight, informed users and institutions willing to accept responsibility for governing powerful technology. California is now experimenting with precisely those kinds of mechanisms.
None of this means Newsom is implementing Catholic social teaching. He is not. Something more interesting is occurring: secular lawmakers and a religious leader, approaching AI from radically different traditions, are independently converging on similar concerns—human dignity, privacy, accountability, meaningful human judgment and preservation of human agency.
Intelligence Is Not Humanity
Thousands of pages of AI statutes, regulations, judicial opinions and ethical rules will undoubtedly follow. But one principle may ultimately matter more than all of them: Artificial intelligence should augment human capability without extinguishing human agency.
There is a difference between AI helping an attorney find the law and AI becoming the attorney; between AI helping a physician identify disease and AI replacing medical judgment; between AI helping an employer analyze its workforce and an algorithm deciding who loses a livelihood; and between technology assisting human creativity and technology manufacturing someone's face, voice or identity without consent.
There is also a fundamental distinction between intelligence and humanity. AI may eventually become faster, more knowledgeable and more capable than we can presently imagine. But intelligence—even extraordinary intelligence—is not synonymous with humanity. Human beings possess lived experience, empathy, compassion, conscience, moral responsibility, forgiveness and the capacity to understand another person's suffering. Whether one approaches those qualities through theology, philosophy, law or ordinary human experience, they are precisely the qualities we should be reluctant to automate away.
Who Will Lead the AI Race?
California's history makes the developing confrontation with
Washington particularly significant. The state that helped lead one technological revolution after another is now asserting that technological leadership also means establishing rules governing how powerful technologies interact with human beings.
Washington sees another imperative: America must move rapidly enough to lead a global technological competition whose economic and national-security consequences could be enormous. California, meanwhile, is demonstrating that it intends to move ahead with its own protections rather than wait for a national consensus.
The question therefore is no longer simply who will lead the AI race? It is also who will write its rules? That brings us back to Pope Leo, whose question may be even more fundamental: What is the race ultimately for?
Innovation matters. Economic growth matters. American technological leadership matters. But technology ultimately exists within a civilization composed of human beings whose dignity, freedom, creativity, work, relationships and moral responsibility cannot simply be outsourced to machines.
Stay Tuned—Because This Is Only the Beginning
California's new laws are complicated and consequential, and they will affect industries very differently. Employers must understand automated employment decisions, displacement and surveillance. Lawyers and arbitrators must understand where AI assistance ends and professional responsibility begins. Healthcare professionals, universities, technology companies, entertainment and media businesses, content creators and biotechnology companies will face their own new requirements.
Over the coming weeks, we will publish separate analyses of these important new California AI laws, translating each into practical, digestible terms: what the law actually says, who it covers, when it becomes effective, what it prohibits or requires, and what businesses and professionals should consider doing now.
So subscribe, forward this article to colleagues and clients who may be interested, and stay tuned. We will take these laws one at a time, with particular attention to their impact on lawyers, employers and employees, healthcare, entertainment and media, privacy, education, deepfakes, digital replicas and AI transparency.
Artificial intelligence is no longer somewhere over the horizon. It is here. A Governor is regulating it. A President is racing to ensure America leads it. And a Pope is asking us to remember whom all this extraordinary technology is supposed to serve.
The race to build the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence is already underway. But when all the political drama, competing regulatory philosophies and breathtaking technological advances are stripped away, my sincere belief—and my hope—is actually quite simple: that the human being remains at the center and, ultimately, in control.
