Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical Magnifica Humanitas drops a line that every developer, entrepreneur and policymaker should read twice: “Technology is never neutral.” This isn’t a religious statement. It’s a technical and economic fact.
Artificial intelligence doesn’t float in a moral vacuum. Every model embeds human decisions about what to optimize, whom to exclude, which cost to cut. Today AI decides who gets a loan, which résumés are discarded, what ads you see. It’s not good or evil by itself – it amplifies the values of those who build it.
Why this hits Italian SMEs hard
Italy has over 4 million micro‑enterprises. A “neutral” AI means adopting models trained on US or Chinese data, for markets that look nothing like ours. Result? Wrong product suggestions, credit scoring that misfires, and zero awareness of local supply chains and seasonality.
We, at Meteora Web, see it daily. Clients using off‑the‑shelf AI plugins for product descriptions: mistranslations, wrong tone, no grasp of retail seasonality. Same for dynamic pricing tools – they apply logic that doesn’t exist in your territory.
Our position is clear
We, at Meteora Web, come from a dual background: tech and accounting. We’ve run ERP systems, balanced books, managed inventory. That’s why we know every line of code has a cost, every automation a return, and every non‑neutral dataset produces real distortions. AI is not a magic wand: it’s a system you design, measure, and correct. Claiming it’s “neutral” is a luxury SMEs can’t afford.
Europe is moving ahead with the AI Act – good. But without technical awareness inside companies, regulations remain paper. Every entrepreneur should ask: who decided what my system optimizes? Which data was it trained on? Can I verify it?
What to do, concretely
If you’re using AI in your business, start with an audit: where does the data come from? Who trained those models? Did the vendor ever test them on your specific sector? We always begin with a face‑to‑face hour to map processes, margins, real customer language. Then we write code. But first we assess impact. Because technology is never neutral – and those who ignore it pay twice: in money and in lost control.
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