home
article
Pope Leo Calls for International Rules to "Disarm" Artificial Intelligence

Pope Leo Calls for International Rules to "Disarm" Artificial Intelligence

Updated on

ai generated text

Pope Leo XIV has called for a slowdown in the development of artificial intelligence, warning that the technology can spread misinformation, foster conflict, and potentially drive the world into perpetual war. In a Vatican event marking the release of his first major document, he noted that some autonomous weapons systems have evolved beyond human control. His remarks underscore the need for governmental oversight of AI advancement.

Leo XIV
Catholic Church
1. Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.
2. Every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations.
3. We cannot consider AI to be morally neutral.
4. I feel entrusted to look upon another huge transformation with eyes of faith, with lucidity of reason, with openness to mystery and with cries of the poor and the earth resounding in my heart.
5. Artificial intelligence already touches many areas of our lives and affects decisions that shape human co-existence.
6. Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness.
7. The construction of a world in a state of perpetual conflict is an evil and must be named for what it is.
8. I hear very troubling accounts of algorithms that can block access to healthcare, employment and security on the basis of data tainted by prejudice and injustice.
9. Very troubling voices have also reached me about increasingly autonomous weapons systems practically beyond any human reach to govern them effectively.
10. I've listened to scientists and engineers who work with sincere enthusiasm on technologies capable of alleviating immense suffering, to political leaders and public officials who have perseveringly sought just rules.
11. Magnifica Humanitas was born from listening, like Leo the XIII did.
12. Like nuclear energy, it must be at the service of all and of the common good. Decisions about technology must never be separated from conscience and responsibility.
13. In a similar sense, artificial intelligence now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion, and death.
14. Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong I know, but deliberately chosen.
15. If technology promises liberation, yet produces new forms of global subordination, it contradicts the fundamental principle of human dignity.
16. A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few.
17. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity.
18. Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of 'armed' competition.
19. Without bold decisions, the prospect of greater poverty and inequality looms large, which would leave many individuals marginalised, stranded and surrounded by the machines and automated systems that have replaced them.
Christopher Olah
Anthropic
1. If we want this technology to go well, it is enormously important that there be people outside those incentives … who are willing to be our earnest, thoughtful critics.
2. Every frontier AI lab, including Anthropic, operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing.
3. These are not questions a lab can answer, but they are questions traditions like yours have carried for millennia ... We need informed critics who will tell the labs when we are failing. We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend.
4. There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labour at a very large scale. If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions.
5. Some might believe that matters of AI are best handled by computer scientists like myself. They are mistaken.
Marijana Grbesa
University of Zagreb
1. It's a wake-up call for the whole of civilization.
2. At the time, it was necessary to train individuals in the use of tools. The same is true today: we need to train and educate.
3. The Industrial Revolution transformed the labour market, people's lives, hegemony, and power dynamics.
Anna Rowlands
1. The encyclical helps all of us – believers and non-believers – to ask the same fundamental question: what does it mean to be human in an age when human life faces an unprecedented challenge from the development of various technologies … this text is a rallying cry, a Gospel cry, to build together a civilisation of love and oppose a culture of mere power.

Pope Leo Calls for International Rules to "Disarm" Artificial Intelligence

sources

perspectives

countries

organizations

persons

technicals