Pope Leo XIV Calls for Serious Discussion on AI Risks

Pope Leo XIV expressed on Monday that concerns regarding artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential threats to humanity are significant and shouldn’t be dismissed as “fake news.” He emphasized the importance of addressing safety issues raised by AI experts.

During a press conference on his flight back to the Vatican from France, the Pope, who focused his first encyclical on AI and its impacts on humanity, was asked about what steps the United States and China should take to mitigate undefined risks associated with AI.

In contrast, U.S. President Donald Trump, a long-time supporter of AI, termed the worries about it becoming uncontrollable as a “hoax” and claimed that initiatives to impose limits on the technology were part of a “SICK conspiracy.”

Trump has also rejected calls from tech leaders, including Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Sam Altman from OpenAI, and Elon Musk, for increased government oversight of AI.

The Pope’s comments add an influential voice to the ongoing debate.

“This is a problem that, I think, we need to sit down and talk about,” the Pope noted. “We can’t just sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen.”

Despite Trump’s firm stance on AI, he argues that the U.S. must maintain its technological edge over China. He views efforts to regulate AI as politically motivated conspiracies spearheaded by his opponents.

Vice President JD Vance also voiced that there’s no need for Americans to be overly concerned. While en route to a campaign event in Kansas, he acknowledged the Trump administration’s awareness of AI issues but stressed the importance of smart regulation, cautioning that the U.S. is involved in an AI arms race with China.

Vance shared his thoughts, saying, “Personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them. It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse. So, I think we just have to be careful about this.”

Despite the optimism from the current administration, the Pope insisted that it’s crucial to be both cautious and vigilant regarding the need for human oversight over AI.

He referenced a recent report on Nvidia introducing safety measures for AI while highlighting that the company has historically resisted external regulation.

“We need to continue to invite political leaders, leaders of AI, social organizations, associations to come together and look at what is happening already and what could be down the road,” the Pope stated. “To simply say ‘Oh it’s not going to happen’ and close our eyes to it I think is probably not the most responsible way to go about that,” he added.