If you search for the top 10 com­pa­nies in the world by mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion, Nvidia leads in the num­ber one spot with a $5.21 tril­lion USD val­u­a­tion since it is the pri­ma­ry pro­duc­er of AI chips and net­work­ing in­fra­struc­ture. Al­most the en­tire top ten list is dom­i­nat­ed by tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, with the on­ly ex­cep­tion be­ing Sau­di Aram­co in 8th place, val­ued at $1.8 tril­lion USD for its oil and gas pro­duc­tion.

De­spite con­stant warn­ings that the AI boom will in­evitably end like the 1999 Dot Com bub­ble, the stocks keep surg­ing and push­ing more com­pa­nies past tril­lion-dol­lar val­u­a­tions. On May 27, Os­mand Chia, writ­ing for the BBC, re­port­ed as fol­lows:

“The stock mar­ket val­u­a­tions of chip­mak­ers SK Hynix and Mi­cron have risen above the $1tn (£740bn) mark, dri­ven by a boom in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) da­ta cen­tres.

Shares in South Ko­rea’s SK Hynix, a key sup­pli­er to AI chip gi­ant Nvidia, jumped by 10 per cent on Wednes­day, con­tin­u­ing a ral­ly that has seen its share price more than triple since the start of this year.

On Tues­day, US mem­o­ry chip­mak­er Mi­cron’s shares rose by al­most 20 per cent af­ter in­vest­ment bank UBS tripled its stock price tar­get for the com­pa­ny.

Both com­pa­nies join a grow­ing group of firms with val­u­a­tions above $1tn, in­clud­ing tech­nol­o­gy gi­ants Nvidia, Ama­zon, Ap­ple, Mi­crosoft, Google-own­er Al­pha­bet and Meta.

There has been mas­sive glob­al de­mand for ad­vanced com­put­er chips that pow­er AI tools, lift­ing the shares of com­pa­nies as­so­ci­at­ed with the tech­nol­o­gy. The surge in de­mand in re­cent years has led to a glob­al mem­o­ry chip short­age, push­ing up sales for man­u­fac­tur­ers like SK Hynix and Mi­cron. Ear­li­er in May, South Ko­rea’s Sam­sung Elec­tron­ics, known for its smart­phones and tele­vi­sions, joined the $1tn club and be­came on­ly the sec­ond Asian firm to reach the mile­stone af­ter Tai­wanese chip­mak­er TSMC.”

It must be re­mem­bered that AI ser­vices re­quire lots of phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, pow­er and cool­ing to func­tion. Com­pa­nies that sup­ply the chips to build out this in­fra­struc­ture are reap­ing huge rev­enues, and com­pa­nies like Mi­crosoft and Ap­ple that are sim­ply im­ple­ment­ing AI fea­tures in their ex­ist­ing prod­ucts are al­so rid­ing a gen­er­al wave of surg­ing stock prices across the tech sec­tor.

The AI boom is help­ing to con­cen­trate wealth and pow­er in­to the hands of a few com­pa­nies and their share­hold­ers, which rais­es eth­i­cal con­cerns. Fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of AI tech­nol­o­gy will re­duce the val­ue of labour and po­ten­tial­ly dis­place work­ers as ro­bot­ics and au­toma­tion be­come ca­pa­ble of tak­ing more and more jobs from hu­mans.

Mag­nifi­ca Hu­man­i­tas

Large Lan­guage mod­els like Chat­G­PT pose huge eth­i­cal prob­lems and . With ref­er­ence to the pa­per by Ge­bru et al “On the Dan­gers of Sto­chas­tic Par­rots: Can Lan­guage Mod­els Be Too Big?” it must be re­mem­bered that Large lan­guage AI mod­els gen­er­ate text but don’t un­der­stand it much like Par­rots don’t un­der­stand lan­guage but mim­ic it. Bi­as­es in da­ta sets will be re­flect­ed in the text gen­er­at­ed, which can re­sult in race and gen­der bias.

In light of this, Pope Leo re­leased his first en­cycli­cal on May 25th, 2026, ad­dress­ing the is­sue of AI. En­ti­tled “Mag­nifi­ca hu­man­i­tas: On Safe­guard­ing the Hu­man Per­son in the Time of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence.” The doc­u­ment dis­cuss­es so­cial jus­tice is­sues and the dig­ni­ty of work in light of the dan­gers of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

The doc­u­ment it­self touch­es on many moral is­sues that are tan­gen­tial to the AI sup­ply chain, like the labour used to ex­tract rare earth min­er­als in un­der­priv­i­leged coun­tries like the Con­go.

An ex­cerpt from para­graph 179 of the en­cycli­cal reads:

“New forms of slav­ery are fu­elled by eco­nom­ic chains and dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­tures. There­fore, ac­tion is re­quired on sev­er­al fronts. First, the sup­ply chains that un­der­pin the tech­no­log­i­cal in­dus­try and the dig­i­tal econ­o­my need to be­come more trans­par­ent, so that no com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage is built up­on hid­den ex­ploita­tion. Sec­ond, com­pa­nies and in­vestors need to adopt clear cri­te­ria for pre­ven­tive eth­i­cal ver­i­fi­ca­tion (due dili­gence), plac­ing among their pri­or­i­ties the pro­tec­tion of work­ers, the fight against forced labour and the as­sess­ment of the so­cial im­pact of da­ta-dri­ven busi­ness mod­els.”

Over­all, the Pope ac­knowl­edges the ob­vi­ous con­cern that AI mega cor­po­ra­tions would use their new­found tril­lions to ben­e­fit the agen­das of an elite few at the ex­pense of the op­pressed and down­trod­den, some of whom may even be child slaves forced to mine min­er­als in war-torn re­gions.

The Pope warns that AI com­pa­nies may be build­ing a new tow­er of Ba­bel dri­ven by tech­no­log­i­cal hubris and dom­i­na­tion in­stead of a so­ci­ety or­dered to­wards hu­man flour­ish­ing.

Pope Leo’s ad­mo­ni­tion comes at a crit­i­cal junc­ture as hu­man­i­ty faces dozens of AI-pow­ered eth­i­cal dilem­mas, from the use of AI to en­hance the lethal­i­ty of weapons to the use of AI in the work­place caus­ing lay­offs and in­creas­ing un­em­ploy­ment.

The mas­sive con­cen­tra­tion of wealth in the hands of all the com­pa­nies in the AI Tril­lion­aire’s club may be­come a threat to democ­ra­cies around the world if they choose to co­or­di­nate and lob­by for laws that ben­e­fit their in­dus­try at the ex­pense of hu­man rights.