Pope Leo XIV has just released the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas on artificial intelligence. The sentence that stopped us: “Technology is never neutral.” It shatters years of Big Tech storytelling. For us, who have been building digital solutions for Italian companies since 2017, this is no surprise: we see it every day in unpatched servers, poorly configured pixels, and plugins that sell data.
The Pope does not ask us to reject AI, but to put it at the service of “human dignity”. In a Europe racing to regulate (AI Act, Digital Services Act), this encyclical is timely: it reminds us that every technological choice is political. An algorithm is not an oracle: it is code written by someone, with its own biases.
Our position is clear: those who build technology decide the values it embeds.
We, at Meteora Web, see this through the lens of the accounting and ERP experience we had before becoming developers. An e-commerce is not neutral: if its form lacks security, it is exposing customer data. If it loads in 6 seconds, it is favoring competitors. If it uses AI to generate product descriptions without oversight, it is pumping out content Google will penalize. Technology is never neutral because every implementation has economic and social impact: whoever owns and controls it sets the direction.
For Italian SMEs – the ones we work with every day – this means something concrete: never outsource your AI decisions blindly. You need to know the tool, understand what it does with your data, and measure the return. AI amplifies, it does not replace. Every output must be verified by someone who knows. We do this with clients: we never activate an AI model without first setting up tracking, security, and data governance.
The encyclical calls us to “act with courage and solidarity”. We translate that into practice: if you are an entrepreneur, stop chasing hype. Ask yourself: who controls this technology? What data does it give away? What is the real long-term cost? Owning your stack – as we do with Laravel – beats renting vendor-locked solutions. Neutrality is a fairy tale. Choose your side.
What to do today: Review every AI tool you use. Check data policies, terms of service, and ensure each tool aligns with GDPR and your business goals. If you lack internal expertise, find a partner who has it. We are here.
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