Fears about artificial intelligence (AI) and its possible threats to humanity are not “fake news” and should be taken seriously, Pope Leo XIV insisted Monday, adding safety issues raised by AI experts should be discussed and acted on.
AP reports Leo, who dedicated his first encyclical to AI and protecting humanity in its wake, was asked during a press conference aboard his flight to the Vatican about what the United States and China especially should be doing to prevent AI from posing as yet undefined risks to humanity.
U.S. President Donald Trump – who has long been a champion of artificial intelligence – has already called for calm and said concerns about AI going rogue are a “hoax,” further adding efforts to limit the technology are part of a “SICK conspiracy.”
Trump has similarly pushed back against calls by tech leaders such as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Elon Musk to have greater government intervention with critical oversight of AI.
Now the Pope has entered the fray.
“This is a problem that, I think, we need to sit down and talk about,” the American-born Pontiff told reporters returning home from France. “We can’t just sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen.”
Trump remains a champion of AI citing the necessity of the United States staying ahead of China in the technological arms race.
He has said efforts to limit the technology were part of a “conspiracy” by his political opponents.
Vice President JD Vance has also said, “I don’t think Americans should be scared of anything.”
Vance, speaking as he prepared to fly to Kansas for a midterm election campaign event earlier this month, confirmed the Trump administration is concerned about AI but wants to make sure it is regulating the technology smartly, warning the U.S. is in an AI arms race against China.
“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,” Vance said. “So, I think we just have to be careful about this.”
Despite the current White House administration’s combined optimism, Leo made clear the time is here to be both fearful and aware of the need for human control.
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Leo noted a news report Monday afternoon about Nvidia introducing guardrails into AI. He also noted that the company has previously resisted outside regulation of AI development.
“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,” he said Monday.
“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.