Question from Justin McLellan, National Catholic Reporter:
Thank you. Holy Father, I'll ask my question in English. In Paris, you spoke on the urgent need for ethical discernment around the development of artificial intelligence and in the wake of multiple cyberattacks committed by rogue AI agents, several tech industry leaders have warned that the technology could destroy the world. How worried are you that AI could pose catastrophic risks to humanity or even wipe it out entirely, and what must nations, especially the United States and China, do to ensure that their technologies are safe for humanity?
Pope Leo XIV, in English:
Thank you. If someone were to ask me, am I in panic mode? No, I'm not. I sleep at night. I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI, should be taken seriously.
I don't think that is fake news, as some have said, to try and cause whether financial or some other kind of benefit. It's interesting to note that just today I read that the head of NVIDIA claims that he has found some way of inserting into AI certain guardrails, if you will, or limits so that they won't go outside of their particular units and cause the damage that people are talking about.
He's the same one, however, that says there should be no limits placed and no government regulation, etc. etc. This is a problem that I think we need to sit down and talk about. We need to continue to invite political leaders, the leaders of AI, social organizations, associations to come together and look at what is happening already and what could be down the road.
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. The Vatican has organized our own commission on artificial intelligence, which on the one hand, if you will, began as a way of coordinating what we ourselves are doing in the Holy See and how we're using AI and what the risks are and what the benefits are.
But since Magnifica Humanitas was published, we have received many contacts from people in many different areas and fields. And so, we are trying to continue to promote dialogue, study, investigation, to find ways to make sure that AI does not get to a point where it could destroy humanity or remove humanity from the conversation.
I am relatively optimistic that that can happen. I think that there are enough people seriously interested in that and willing to look outside of the questions, once again of power, who gets there first, what happens when AI goes to being what they call General Artificial Intelligence, etc. etc.
But we have to keep working, we can't sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen.
