In his first major papal text since assuming leadership of the Catholic church last year, Pope Leo issued a stark warning about the rise of artificial intelligence this week, denouncing the “culture of power” driving the AI age.

Calling for the “most rigorous” ethical constraints on AI – which he described as one of the greatest threats facing humanity today – the first US-born pope also warned of “new forms of slavery” emerging through the digital economy.

Speaking to the Guardian, readers in the US echoed the pope’s concerns, describing AI as an “unregulated” industry increasingly being used to the “detriment of too many people”, while also raising fears about surveillance, labor displacement, war and environmental harm.

For Linda Given, a 74-year-old resident of Boston, Massachusetts, who ran a small gift store in Cambridge for nearly 40 years, the pope’s warning resonated deeply.

“I think he’s right to emphasize the dignity of humans, and to warn that things in the AI field are moving both too fast, and without any significant oversight,” Given said, adding: “To use it as any kind of substitute for human interaction or human agency [is] awful … [and] the entirely likely possibility it could be manipulated to do destructive things.”

Stephen Sincoskie, a 55-year-old print shop supervisor from Howell, New Jersey, expressed similar concerns.

“Unregulated AI is a possible threat to workers, privacy and even human life. Unfortunately, the most corrupt family in politics … is making money to look the other way,” he said.

“I’m concerned the use of AI will replace workers and assist in the ushering in of a fascistic surveillance state. I do not believe for one second the 1% are interested in paying out guaranteed monthly salaries for everyone to relax and enjoy a career and ‘debt free’ life.”

Others focused on the effect AI is already having on education and critical thinking.

Debra, a 58-year-old college professor in Massachusetts, said she worries students are losing critical thinking skills.

“From my perspective, AI is robbing many students of the need to think critically, learn the ways of research and express themselves by writing,” she said, before adding: “I appreciate the perspective of the pope and just wish that the church could apply the logic used with respect to AI to their church’s positions on matters relating to gender and sexuality. For instance, it’s ridiculous that women cannot serve as priests in the church. That should be an easy one to fix, but unfortunately these supposedly holy men can’t see their way clearly to recognizing that inherent human dignity extends to women too.”

For Scott Gibb, a 70-year-old retiree in California, the issue came down to moral leadership.

“Someone needs to have some moral clarity around this issue and it sure isn’t Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. They are soulless,” Gibb, who is not Catholic but supports Pope Leo, said.

Lauren, a Baltimore, Maryland-based reader who works in international aid and relief, also praised the pope’s intervention.

“His encyclical and his remarks constitute much needed moral leadership in this time, especially when the tech leaders are interested mainly in profit at the expense of humanity,” she said.

She also pointed to AI’s environmental costs and growing use in warfare.

“Yes, AI is consuming natural resources and land at an alarming pace, for dubious benefits. At its best, if the product succeeds as tech leaders want it to, it will replace humans and make it difficult for regular people to earn a living. It is already used in war, and there are concerns it has accelerated conflicts and led to the killing of civilians. The expansion of AI is happening without any input from citizens, and the threat from AI is enormous.”

Sam Bakkila, a 37-year-old computer science and instructional designer based in New York City, agreed with many of the pope’s criticisms.

“AI is being developed and pushed by some of the worst leaders in the American technology and venture capital industries, whose whole strategy is to move fast, break things, and take advantage of government bureaucracy’s inability to regulate them in a timely manner to create hugely powerful monopolies before the government can catch up,” Bakkila, whose livelihood depends on helping students use AI professionally, said.

“I don’t think it’s possible to understand anything happening in American politics right now without thinking through the impact of AI. I think that tech CEOs lined up behind Donald Trump knowing that this four-year period would be crucial for AI adoption, and that they supported him knowing that he would both avoid regulating AI and would secure hundreds of billions of dollars of government funding for AI infrastructure and integrating AI into defense networks.”

Bakkila continued: “AI is pushing American corporations further towards monopolies … and these corporations have now realized that it is in their interest to secure a political environment that will not regulate them.”

Paul, a 67-year-old former professor of ethics and logic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, compared AI to nuclear weapons, arguing that both possess the capacity for mass harm.

“They both target everywhere and nearly anyone on the planet. Why have nukes never been used? Simply put: humans successfully applied commonly held ethical/moral rules to prevent their use. Absent my nation’s gross folly in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they’ve not been used since. We have, worldwide, invoked a shared ethical stance: we shall not use them,” he said.

“AI has equal power to create conditions/actions to harm, even kill millions of humans. It is designed to enslave us. Yet, there isn’t a whit of ethical programming built in, except to serve a global oligarchy in domination of everything,” Paul added.

Not all readers, however, agreed that the pope’s views should carry particular authority in the global debate on AI.

“I don’t understand why the pope’s remarks should have any bearing on anything whatsoever. In an increasingly secular world, why does somebody who claims to speak for an alleged deity have any relevance?” said Charlie Hinkle, a 60-year-old tech worker from Charlotte, North Carolina.

He continued: “The Catholic church might be the largest organized religion in the world, but its believers have long seemed to go their own way on issues (contraception, LGBTQ rights, women’s empowerment, etc). The pope, as far as I am concerned, is irrelevant.”

A 76-year-old firefighter based in Oklahoma similarly dismissed the broader framing of religion versus AI.

“I find the debate over AI versus religion, any religion, to be pointless, akin to arguing which is worse, Ebola or hantavirus, when both are equally odious. The insistence on a reliance on either religion or AI exposes a serious weakness in the human condition, that being the need for some external validation or support, which leads to manipulation and use of the individual by the purveyors of one or the other,” he said.