Great quote: Pope Leo said decisions that affect life, freedom and the use of force must always remain under human supervision, the Pope said.
The pope also made clear the Catholic Church’s position in the debate over whether AI systems should be given rights or legal personality, saying the Vatican views machines as tools rather than sentient beings entitled to their own legal rights. AI is developed by humans, he added, and granting it rights or personality would obscure human responsibility.
The future of artificial intelligence is not predetermined, said the Pope, but depends on people’s decisions. “We therefore have a responsibility to guide, modify and, if necessary, reject its applications,” he said, adding that the crucial question with AI is not what it can do, but “what purpose should it serve?”
In an address on Friday, the Chicago-born pope also expressed strong reservations about the use of AI in warfare and border control, saying that certain decisions should “never be delegated to technology.” People should always have control over target lists, border control databases and autonomous weapons, he said.
Explaining his stance, the pope said advanced technologies must be aimed at the good of humanity. This goal can only be achieved if international institutions and governments work together to ensure that ethical principles and not corporate profits guide the development of AI.
This is not the first time that Pope Leo has spoken out against leaving deadly decisions to AI. When he made similar comments in his May encyclical, Mistral co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch demurred, arguing that Europe needed its own military AI capabilities because its adversaries were already using the technology.
Pope Leo is not the first pope to denounce the use of autonomous weapons in warfare. In an address to the G7 summit in 2024, Pope Francis stressed the importance of leaving decision-making in human hands, noting that a machine makes a technical decision based on defined criteria or statistical conclusions, while humans “not only choose, but are in their hearts able to decide.”
