As the world’s top economies battle for supremacy in Artificial Intelligence, a word of caution has come from none other than the head of the Catholic Church.
In his first encyclical released on Monday, Pope Leo warned governments of the risks involved in the development of AI systems highlighting the need for ethical regulation.
The first U.S. pope said that AI is pushing the world towards an unending war by spreading misinformation and creating conflicts. He also called out tech companies over their rivalries to gain control of AI systems.
Pope Leo also expressed concern at an event being organized by the Vatican where the text was released that said some of the advanced autonomous weapons systems were now beyond any human control.
This event was also attended by the co-founder of Anthropic, Chris Olah. Anthropic is in a bitter standoff with the Department of Defence over the use of AI systems for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.
Pope shows he’s not shy of stoking political tempers
Pope Leo has been rather vocal about political issues, most recently, he made the headlines over his comments regarding the Iran war. This led to a standoff with the U.S. President Donald Trump, who called the Pope “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy.”
Trump also said that Pope Leo was “endangering the lives of catholics” and that he was fine with Iran having nuclear weapons.
This is the first time that Pope Leo has spoken about AI, and with most of the top tech companies coming from the U.S. these comments will add to the debate on ethical use of AI.
The Pope said that AI data ownership should not be left exclusively with private companies and that governments need to ensure that rights of workers are protected and children are kept safe from the negative effects of technology.
“What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating,” said Leo in the text, entitled “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity).
The pope called for “robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility.”
After Iran war, Pope now focuses on AI wars
The encyclical has been highly anticipated as these form the highest teaching circular released by the pontiff addressing the Church’s 1.4 billion members. Monday’s text went on for 43,000 words and covered AI as its central theme and denounced the number of wars being fought around the world, the decline of multilateral organizations and the profits from arms trade pushing more conflicts.
“Humanity is slipping into a violent culture of power, where peace no longer appears as a responsibility to be taken on, but as a fragile interval between conflicts,” Leo said.
Leo’s comments were instantly given the stamp of approval by Anthropic co-founder Olah who welcomed the Pope raising issues of ethical deployment of AI. He said that Anthropic, which is the developer of Claude AI chatbot, had faced closed scrutiny and had been under commercial pressure.
“Every frontier AI lab, including Anthropic, operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing,” Olah said.
Olah’s comments are relevant looking at what the Pope said about the use of AI in wars. Anthropic has had a run-in with the Department of Defence over the use of its tools in surveillance and weapon systems.
The Pope highlighted this in his encyclical saying the use of AI in warfare needs to be subjected to the most rigorous ethical scrutiny and restrictions. He made it clear that it is unacceptable to allow such autonomous systems to be in charge of such decisions which directly impact people’s lives.
Leo went on to thank the Anthropic co-founder saying he looked forward to the Church working with the AI company to “find the future of humanity.”
Big Tech companies pushing ‘modern-day slavery’
Leo XIV also raised concerns about the “new forms of slavery” that was being seen in the development of AI systems and products where workers were pushed into exploitative conditions to produce devices such as computers and smartphones.
“In some regions of the world, children and adolescents work in dangerous conditions, crushing the materials from which rare earth elements are extracted,” wrote the pope.
“The bodies of these people are scarred, injured and worn down so that computational flow may continue uninterruptedly,” he said. “This reality deeply challenges the moral conscience of our time.”
Leo wrote in his encyclical about AI turning into the new Tower of Babel. He urged society to face the crucial questions around AI and the direction in which it was developing.
“With the heart of a shepherd and a father, I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good,” the pope stated.
Leo urged the world not to give up on addressing the possible risks of AI systems.
“A subtle temptation may emerge, namely the thought that the problems are too big and we are too small, and that our choices, therefore, cannot make a difference,” he wrote.
“Certainly, not everyone has the same power to make a difference,” Leo said. “Yet, no one is without responsibility. We all have our own areas for action.”