The Pope's AI Warning, and Why Women Need to Reclaim Their Agency

The Pope just signed his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, and it's about AI. His warning to the world: protect the human person before artificial intelligence erodes our work, our relationships, and our agency

While tech companies race to build agents and automate everything, the Vatican did something unexpected. It created a commission on AI, not to celebrate the technology, but to protect human dignity. And when Pope Leo XIV presented the document, he did it standing beside a co-founder of the AI company Anthropic. What an unexpected twist.

So what does this actually mean for women navigating AI at work right now?
In this episode of AI Ready Women, Georgie and Lou sit down with Julianne Hickey, a social justice leader, AI governance expert, and former director of Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand.

Julianne has met Pope Francis twice, worked in Gaza and Palestine responding to humanitarian disasters, and now leads AI strategy for a major government organisation in New Zealand.

This is a conversation about what happens when we stop asking what AI can do, and start asking what it should do. And why the future of AI isn't just a technical question. It's a spiritual one.

(Recorded just before the encyclical's public release on 25 May 2026.)
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Connect with Lou Compagnone:
🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loucompagnone/
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Connect with Julianne Hickey:
🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliannehickey/
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CHAPTERS

0:00 Welcome to AI Ready Women, and the Pope's unexpected move on AI
2:40 Julianne's journey: Zimbabwe, Ubuntu, and "I am who I am because of who we all are"
4:15 From London consulting to humanitarian work in Gaza and Palestine: power, dignity, and who gets left behind
7:00 Inside Empire of AI: the extraction problem and AI's concentration of power
8:15 Te Hiku Media: the Māori organisation that built a language model on one GPU, not thousands
10:30 The Pope's first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, and human dignity in the age of automation
14:30 The Rome Call and the Builders AI Forum: "What business does the Pope have in AI?"
18:00 What this means if you're not Catholic: agency, power, and why women get left out of the room
22:00 AI agents vs human agency: why the language we use matters more than we think
25:30 The Vatican's AI commission: seven departments, rotating terms, and a cross functional governance model
27:00 Why most organisations treat AI as a tech project when it's a strategic one
30:00 Burnout, fear, and feeling unsafe at work: what leaders get dangerously wrong about productivity and people
32:00 Two companies, opposite bets: cutting graduate hires vs investing in young workers
35:00 Te Whare Tapa Whā: the Māori wellbeing model Julianne uses to stay AI ready
38:00 Final thoughts: making sure AI serves people, not the other way around
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If this episode resonated with you, reach out to Julianne, Lou, and Georgie on LinkedIn. Let us know your biggest takeaway. Share what you're doing to protect human dignity in your work. Tell us how you're making sure AI serves people, not the other way around.

And if you know an incredible woman working in AI, ethics, governance, or social justice who should be on this podcast, send us her name. We want to amplify women's voices. We want representation. We want you in the room.

The future belongs to the women who are ready for it.

Let's make sure that's you.

Georgie 💜

#AIReadyWomen #PopeAI #MagnificaHumanitas #ArtificialIntelligence #WomenInAI #AIEthics #HumanDignity.