By Roman Aglaganov
Pope Leo XIV used a meeting with AI researchers at the Vatican on 30 October to set out where he thinks the line should be drawn. The gathering, “The Future of AI”, was organised by the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit that campaigns on risks from advanced AI.
Five points
Drawing on his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, the Pope made five arguments, according to Vatican News.
The future is not fixed: AI’s direction depends on human choices, so “we have the responsibility to guide, change, and, when necessary, reject its applications.”
Machines are not persons: Giving AI systems rights or legal personhood would risk “obscuring human responsibility and leaving those who suffer harm to confront a faceless entity.”
Some decisions belong to people: Putting someone on a target list or a border database reduces them to data, he said. He called for AI to be “disarmed” and urged states meeting in Geneva in November to move towards banning lethal autonomous weapons.
The benefits should be shared: AI tools “must never become ends in themselves or serve merely the interests of a privileged few.”
Principles need institutions: Shared standards, independent oversight and ways for people to get redress are needed to turn ethics into practice, and powerful systems “must always remain subject to effective, informed, and responsible human oversight”.
Why it matters
The Vatican has no vote in AI law, but its views reach well beyond Catholics, and it has pressed the weapons issue for years: in 2024 Pope Francis told G7 leaders that no machine should ever choose to take a human life. The new address lands on two live debates. Talks on autonomous weapons under the UN’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons have run for more than a decade without a treaty, and as AI agents act more independently, questions about who is responsible for what they do are getting harder. On both, the Pope’s answer is the same: keep a responsible human in charge.
