Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna has formally challenged the chief executives of eight major technology companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI — to explain how their artificial intelligence policies protect jobs, human dignity and equality. The letters, sent following a bipartisan congressional visit to Vatican City last week, ask each CEO to align their AI development with the ethical principles outlined in Pope Leo XIV's debut encyclical, Magnifica humanitas.

The Vatican Meeting That Sparked the Letters

Khanna co-led a bipartisan congressional delegation to Europe covering Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. In Vatican City, the delegation attended Pope Leo XIV's general audience, where Khanna spoke directly with the pontiff about Magnifica humanitas and praised his call to protect human dignity amid the rapid expansion of AI.

The delegation also met Monsignor Daniel Pacho, Under Secretary of the Secretariat of State, with discussions spanning religious freedom in China, values-based foreign policy and the Pope's emerging role as a global voice on ethical AI development. Members separately met a leading AI expert, covering model distillation, safety guardrails and data centre expansion.

What Khanna Is Demanding from Tech CEOs

'I was honored to meet with Pope Leo, who has offered, more clearly than any other global leader, an ethical framework for AI grounded in two fundamental principles: human dignity and equality,' Khanna said.

'Every technology leader should follow this framework. That is why I am calling on the CEOs of major AI companies to answer for how their policies align with Magnifica humanitas, including how they will prevent mass unemployment and ensure that technology remains in the service of human beings,' he added.

The letters place some of the world's most influential corporations at the centre of an intensifying debate over AI's social and economic consequences — notably, the risk of large-scale job displacement as automation accelerates across industries.

Silicon Valley Congressman, Global Stakes

Khanna represents California's 17th Congressional District, which lies at the heart of Silicon Valley and includes communities deeply embedded in the technology industry. That geography lends his questions about AI employment and corporate accountability particular weight: he is, in effect, asking the industry on his own doorstep to justify its trajectory.

He also serves as ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which examines US strategic competition with China across economic and national security dimensions — including critical technology and supply chains. The Vatican visit was woven into that broader mandate, with discussions on Beijing's global influence and religious freedom in China featuring alongside the AI ethics agenda.

AI Ethics Meets Geopolitics

Notably, the delegation's European tour connected two distinct but converging concerns: the ethical governance of AI and the strategic competition with China. The talks examined the need to prevent excessive concentrations of power as new technologies develop — a concern that resonates both in the context of Big Tech consolidation and Beijing's state-directed AI ambitions.

Whether the targeted CEOs respond substantively remains to be seen. Khanna's move, however, signals a growing congressional appetite to hold AI companies accountable not just on safety and security grounds, but on the broader social contract their technologies imply.