As Artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates into every corner of our economy and daily lives, too often, lawmakers and developers’ focus are on efficiency, speed, and scale. But there is a more foundational question: What do we, as Americans, want from AI?

The answer should be apparent. AI should be developed in a way that benefits Americans and allows them to flourish. President Trump captures this in his Executive Order titled Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence where he states that “it is the policy of the United States to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” President Trump is correct as AI should only exists to make our lives better, to increase the marginal product of our labor, and to make our nation safer.

Indeed, the choices we make in this generation about AI will shape the moral horizon within which the next century of human beings labor, marry, raise children, and die. To be sure, we are still the deciders here. As Pope Leo XIV argued, we must steer “[t]echnology [to] alleviate humanity's sufferings and open new possibilities” and prevent “it [from] denying the essence of humanity, which is our 'capacity for relationship and love.'”

AI has already demonstrated that it can benefit humanity. Work is easier, outcomes are faster, complex information is more accessible, simple understanding is easier to gain, and the list goes on. All of which are better for people, our economy, and our nation. And it is creating wealth and value economically.  

But there is also a danger (like any other technology)—unfettered corporatism.

This has the potential to undercut all of the benefits AI has already provided us and can hamper true human flourishing. Unfortunately, developers are already making judgments that have major moral implications for us as users without appropriate government oversight. They frequently do so unilaterally and with substantial opacity. As a result, these companies demand public buy-in without building trust first.

Make no mistake, corporations imbue their moral choices running through every algorithm and token. When a company trains an algorithm to maximize engagement, for example, users are asked to trust that the system will not privilege outrage over truth merely because outrage more reliably sustains attention. Irrespective of whether a corporate citizen intends for a model to do a particular thing or the AI does it on its own, they are already demonstrating that they are building an AI on a hierarchy that runs contrary to true human flourishing.

We cannot provide developers such a broad license. Especially when we consider that we are building systems of enormous power, and the systems will do what we direct them to do.

Given this, the American people deserve an AI technology policy that promotes our liberty and provides guardrails to establish order to protect for our most important institutions and associations—liberty and order being the two pillars of American flourishing.  

But how is that achieved? We demand it by rooting our policies on traditional, commonsense American values!

If AI is deliberately designed to respect human dignity, strengthen community, and advance shared prosperity, it may become one of humanity’s greatest instruments of service rather than its reckoning. For instance, AI can lead to more scientific and medical discovery by its ability to compress years of drug development, disease diagnosis, and materials research into months. It can also lift economic productivity broadly by automating routine work so businesses can redirect employees’ time and capital toward higher-value, more creative endeavors. AI also has the potential to put capabilities once reserved for the wealthy within reach of ordinary people, narrowing rather than widening opportunity gaps.

We should direct our AI policy to achieve those higher goods. Most preeminently, we must accelerate AI abundance that allows families to thrive. It must augment, not replace, the workers whose labor makes that abundance possible. It must shield children from harms they cannot yet recognize and place parents—not platforms—in authority over their formation. It must defend the nation in which all of this becomes possible.

AI must also prohibit censorship. When these models systematically and by design tilt against certain political, religious, or moral viewpoints, they undermine the freedom of man by narrowing the scope of his choices ultimately eroding the conditions of self-government and the institutions that facilitate it.

None of this can be assumed. Policymakers, builders, citizens, and parents must be the key negotiators here. It will demand of all of them the moral discernment to which Pope Leo XIV has called the field. The technology will not save us. Neither will it destroy us, unless we let it. The choice, as it has always been, is ours.