Comparative Analysis of AI Legislation in Europe vs. the U.S. in Light of Magnifica Humanitas
The comparative analysis of the regulatory frameworks of the European Union and the United States in 2026 shows that both legislative approaches operate under fragmented conceptions of algorithmic governance. In both cases, artificial intelligence is understood more as a technical or strategic object than as a fully developed anthropological phenomenon.
In the European Union, the approach is structured around risk management, the protection of fundamental rights, and the consolidation of the internal market. The United States, by contrast, prioritizes accelerated innovation, global competitiveness, and national security, with a more flexible and dispersed regulatory framework.
Against these models, Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas introduces a different perspective that situates artificial intelligence within an anthropology of care. It affirms that no technology can be understood apart from the irreducible dignity of the human person. This shift implies that the question is not only how to regulate artificial intelligence, but from which conception of the human being regulation is derived. The debate moves from efficiency to moral foundations.
The European Artificial Intelligence Act establishes a risk-based architecture that classifies systems into prohibited, high-risk, and low-risk categories. Its aim is to prevent harm through supervision, transparency, and technical obligations. However, this model remains administrative and preventive, focused more on avoiding harm than on redefining social purposes. Innovation is therefore conditioned by regulatory compliance.
In the United States, governance is expressed through executive orders oriented toward strategic deregulation. The priority is to maintain global leadership and accelerate technological development with minimal federal intervention. This system generates dynamism but also regulatory fragmentation and dependence on corporate power. Regulation adapts to shifting geopolitical interests.
The encyclical Magnifica Humanitas criticizes both models for their instrumental view of the human person. Europe tends to see the citizen as a protected subject, while the United States views them as a competitive resource.
The papal text proposes three central principles: ontological dignity, subsidiarity, and an integral care for the human communicative environment. These principles redefine technology as a moral issue rather than a purely technical one.
One of the key concepts is digital colonialism, which describes the extraction of labor and environmental resources across the global artificial intelligence supply chain. This includes data mining, labor exploitation, and technological concentration.
The development of autonomous weapons is also rejected, as it breaks human moral responsibility. Decisions over life and death cannot be delegated to algorithmic systems.
In the communicative sphere, an approach focused on caring for the informational environment is proposed, going beyond mere technical transparency. The central problem is the manipulation of attention and algorithmic polarization.
Digital platforms are not neutral: their algorithms can foster addiction, conflict, and misinformation. For this reason, the encyclical proposes intervening in their structural design, not only in their content.
Likewise, subsidiarity is interpreted as distributed governance with the participation of local academic and civic communities in technological oversight. This principle seeks to prevent both excessive state centralization and the absolute dominance of large technology corporations.
The symbolic analysis of the encyclical introduces two civilizational models: the Tower of Babel and the city of Jerusalem.
The Tower of Babel represents the paradigm of technical unification without ethical limits. In this model, humanity seeks to construct a total system of control and knowledge that eliminates linguistic, cultural, and moral diversity.
Babel symbolizes the concentration of power in single structures, where everything is measured through a uniform language of efficiency and calculation. In the field of artificial intelligence, this translates into centralized, opaque systems dependent on a small number of global actors.
Although it promises unity, Babel ultimately produces fragmentation, because homogenization eliminates the possibility of genuine communication between diverse subjects.
In contrast, Jerusalem represents the communal and distributed construction of social order. It is not a centralized project but a shared endeavor in which each group contributes a part. In this image, cooperation replaces imposition, and diversity is integrated without being erased. Jerusalem symbolizes a form of unity based on relationship rather than uniformity.
Applied to artificial intelligence, Jerusalem implies open systems, participatory governance, and shared responsibility among multiple social actors.
The essential difference between the two models is that Babel seeks unity without plurality, while Jerusalem seeks unity within plurality. Taken together, the three frameworks analyzed reflect distinct forms of rationality. The European Union represents a preventive legal rationality, the United States a competitive strategic rationality, and the encyclical an anthropological rationality centered on human dignity.
None of these models alone is sufficient to govern the complexity of contemporary artificial intelligence.
The challenge is to avoid a drift toward a new digital Babel characterized by the concentration of technological power and instead build structures inspired by the Jerusalem model, where technology is subordinated to the common good and to the dignity of the human person as a non-negotiable principle.
Photo by Zulfugar Karimov on Unsplash
