Pope Leo issues horror AI warfare warning – ‘practically beyond any human reach’ | World | News
Pope Leo’s first circular was published today (Image: Getty)
Pope Leo called on governments to slow and closely regulate the development of artificial intelligence systems in his first major document published on Monday. The first US pope expressed concern at an event at the Vatican, writing that some autonomous weapons systems were “so advanced that humans are practically unable to control them.”
Pope Leo, who has adopted a harsher tone in recent months and drew the ire of Donald Trump after criticizing the Iran war, made a series of impassioned appeals to world leaders in the long document known as the encyclical. The Catholic Church leader called on policymakers to protect workers’ rights and protect children from technology so that ownership of AI data should not be left solely in private hands, and he called for competition between AI companies to cool.
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In the text titled Magnifica Humanitas, he said: “While everything is speeding up, there is a need for more active political participation that can slow things down.”
The pope called for “robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility.”
Circulars are one of the highest forms of teaching, extending from a priest to the 1.4 billion members of the Church.
Monday’s eagerly awaited text, at nearly 43,000 words, has been in the works nearly since Leo was elected pope just over a year ago.
The document, which takes artificial intelligence as its main theme, also condemned the number of wars around the world.
He said: “The past 60 years have been marked by conflicts of staggering brutality, often affecting civilian populations on a large scale.
Pope Leo’s encyclical is called Magnifica Humanitas (Image: Getty)
“Humanity is shifting towards a culture of violent power, where peace no longer appears as a responsibility to be assumed, but as a delicate interval between conflicts.”
In his encyclical, Leo made one of the clearest statements ever by a pope rejecting the just war theory that the Church has used to evaluate global conflicts since at least the fifth century.
The doctrine generally says that wars should be fought solely for the purpose of defense against aggression.
“The ‘just war’ theory so often used to justify all kinds of war is no longer valid,” Leo wrote.
“The use of force, violence and weapons reflects relational poverty, which invariably leads to disastrous consequences for civilian populations.”
The pope also said any use of AI in warfare “must be subject to the strictest ethical constraints” and said it was “impermissible” to give AI systems lethal decisions.
