Pope Leo XIV said Monday that concerns about artificial intelligence going rogue are not "fake news" and should be taken seriously, in a pointed rebuke of technology executives who argue the technology should develop without government guardrails. Speaking at a press conference aboard the papal flight back to Rome after a four-day visit to France, the pope also took aim — without naming him at first — at Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's stance against AI regulation, according to reporting by AFP, AP and Reuters carried by Al Jazeera.
The remarks land at a combustible moment for AI policy. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump is set to host tech leaders including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Anthropic's Dario Amodei at the White House, as Reuters reports, with the industry pushing back against regulation even as leading scientists warn about catastrophic risks. For readers tracking the collision between governments and the AI industry, AI Buzz Wire follows the latest AI developments from Washington to Brussels to the Vatican.
'The Concerns Should Be Taken Seriously'
The pope was asked during the in-flight news conference about what the United States and China — the world's two AI superpowers — should be doing to prevent AI from posing catastrophic risks to humanity. Trump has previously called concerns about AI going rogue a "hoax."
"I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI, should be taken seriously," the pontiff said, insisting the safety issues raised by AI experts should be both discussed and acted upon. He urged the world "to promote dialogue, study, investigation, to find ways to make sure that AI does not get to a point where it could destroy humanity."
The Exchange With Jensen Huang
The most pointed moment came when Leo referenced an announcement he said he had read about just that morning: that the head of chipmaker Nvidia had described a way to insert guardrails into certain AI models. The pope expressed open skepticism about the messenger.
"He's the same one, however, that says there should be no limits placed and no government regulation," Leo said — a direct hit at Huang, who per the pool reports told CBS News earlier this month that he agreed with Trump that safety concerns about AI were overblown.
The announcement the pope referenced appears to be Nvidia's newly unveiled Open Agent Safety Platform, a hardware-and-software effort designed to police autonomous AI agents and prevent them from going rogue. The irony was not lost on observers: the industry's most valuable company is now selling safety technology while simultaneously lobbying against the government regulation that safety advocates say is needed to enforce it.
A Papacy Built on AI Warnings
Monday's comments extend what has become the defining theme of Leo's 16-month papacy. The first American pope identified AI as one of the biggest challenges facing humanity within days of his election, and devoted his first encyclical to AI and the protection of humanity — taking the unusual step of personally launching the document alongside Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah at a Vatican event in May.
Under Leo, the Vatican has steadily escalated its rhetoric and initiatives in favor of international AI governance, with particular focus on fields like nuclear technology, culture, and artistic creation. The May encyclical launch was part of a deliberate Vatican effort to engage Silicon Valley directly about the human costs of AI — an outreach that now extends to challenging executives in public. The pope said the effort to convene decision-makers must continue: "We need to continue to invite political leaders, leaders of AI, social organisations, associations to come together and look at what is happening already and what could be down the road."
"I think that there are enough people seriously interested in that… but we have to keep working," he added.
Why a Pope Is Getting Under Silicon Valley's Skin
Leo's intervention matters because it targets the central contradiction in the industry's current posture. In recent weeks, OpenAI scrapped a frontier model release over alignment failures, Nvidia and other labs have rushed out agent-safety products, and prominent scientists including Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio have warned of a runaway "intelligence explosion" — the same day as the pope's remarks, in fact. Yet the industry's leading voices continue to argue that government regulation would stifle innovation.
The pope's message was that both things cannot be true at once: if the risks are real enough to justify selling safety software, they are real enough to justify rules. With the White House rolling out the red carpet for AI executives this week, Leo is positioning the Vatican as one of the few global institutions willing to say so plainly.
Stay Ahead of AI
Follow the global fight over AI's future. Read more AI news on AI Buzz Wire.
Latest AI developments →
