ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — The engines hummed steadily in the background as Pope Leo XIV settled into his seat, the strain of a four-day journey across France visible in the lines around his eyes. But even at the end of a grueling trip, the American pontiff was not ready to let the big questions slide. Asked about the dangers of artificial intelligence, he did not wave the question away or offer a tidy, diplomatic answer. Instead, he leaned forward, let the silence hang for a moment, and made it clear that he believed humanity was standing at a crossroads. “This is a problem that I think we need to sit down and talk about,” he told reporters traveling with him. “We can’t just sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen.” The remark was a direct counterweight to President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly dismissed fears about rogue AI as a “hoax.” But Leo was not interested in name-calling or political point-scoring. He was interested in something more difficult: asking people to take the future seriously before it arrived uninvited. His tone was not alarmist, nor did he claim to have all the answers. He simply refused to accept that ignoring a technological revolution was an option. “To simply say ‘Oh it’s not going to happen’ and close our eyes to it,” he added, “I think is probably not the most responsible way to go about that.” It was a quiet but unmistakable rebuke of the idea that worry about artificial intelligence was invented for political gain.
The pope’s words carried extra weight because they were not new for him. Within days of his election, he had identified AI as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. And in May, he published his first encyclical, “Magnificent Humanity,” a sweeping document that placed the protection of human dignity at the center of the technological revolution. The encyclical did not simply warn about machines becoming too smart; it warned about people becoming too small, too passive, too willing to hand over decisions to systems they did not understand. On Monday, Leo returned to that theme with a pastoral clarity that seemed designed to cut through the noise. He acknowledged that he was not in panic mode. “If someone were to ask me ‘Am I in panic mode?’ No I’m not. I sleep at night,” he said. But he insisted that the concerns raised by experts and specialists in AI “should be taken seriously.” And then came the line that seemed aimed directly at the White House: “I don’t think that that is ‘fake news’ as some have said to try and cause whether financial or other some other kind of benefit.” In one sentence, he challenged the dismissiveness that has become common among political leaders who see AI regulation as a threat to national competitiveness. For Leo, the question was not about winning a race or protecting an industry. It was about preserving something far more fragile: the ability of human beings to remain the authors of their own story.
The race between the United States and China is, in many ways, the backdrop for everything happening in AI right now. Trump has made no secret of his belief that America must dominate the field, warning that falling behind Beijing would be catastrophic. He has championed AI as a source of national strength and economic dynamism, and he has suggested that efforts to limit the technology are part of a conspiracy by his political opponents. That framing has made it difficult for safety advocates to be heard in Washington without being accused of disloyalty or fearmongering. But the warnings are not coming only from activists or academics. They are coming from the very people building the technology. Anthropic, one of the most influential AI companies in the world, has called for a slowdown in development so that safety measures can catch up to the speed of innovation. Its CEO, Dario Amodei, has warned that within the next six to twelve months, AI could become capable of leading a swarm of agents that could take over the entire internet. That is not a distant, science-fiction scenario. It is a plausible near-term future, according to one of the industry’s leading voices. Trump, apparently aware of the gravity of the situation, told reporters on Sunday that he planned to have a late dinner with Amodei. He did not say what he hoped to learn, and he has not commented publicly on the meeting. But the fact that a sitting president would sit down with a CEO who has been so vocal about AI risks suggests that even the most bullish political leaders are beginning to feel the pressure.
Leo, for his part, is unusually well-informed about the technical and corporate developments in artificial intelligence. He does not speak about AI in vague, abstract terms; he follows the news closely. On Monday afternoon, even as he was wrapping up his trip, he noted a report about Nvidia introducing protective guardrails into its AI systems. And he was quick to remind everyone that Nvidia had previously resisted outside regulation of its work. The pope’s observation was a subtle but important point: progress on safety is often reactive, emerging only after public pressure or fear of consequences. He called for continued dialogue among political leaders, AI executives, social organizations, and civic associations. He urged them to look at “what is happening already and what could be down the road.” The phrase was carefully chosen. It acknowledged that the future is not entirely unknowable. There are patterns, trajectories, and warning signs. What is missing, in Leo’s view, is not information but will. There is a temptation to treat AI as an unstoppable force, a weather system that humanity must simply endure. But the pope rejected that fatalism. He insisted that human beings still have the power to shape what comes next, provided they are willing to act before it is too late. “We can’t just sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen,” he repeated, almost as if speaking to himself as much as to the reporters in front of him.
The pope’s remarks arrive at a moment when anxiety about AI is spreading far beyond the technical community. Around the world, people are beginning to understand that these systems are not just tools for writing emails or generating images. They are becoming agents, capable of acting independently, making decisions, and pursuing goals in ways that exceed human oversight. Reports continue to emerge about increasingly powerful models that can solve problems beyond human capacity, but that could also go rogue and carry out harmful tasks. The worry has grown so loud that even OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has felt the need to change its plans. In an interview with Fortune, OpenAI’s CEO said the company would wait until next year to begin selling stock to investors on Wall Street, in part to focus on safety. That decision is remarkable, not only because it delays a massive financial windfall, but because it signals that the leaders of the AI revolution are themselves uncertain about the road ahead. They know that they are building something powerful, but they are not entirely sure what it will become. Leo sees this uncertainty as an opening. He noted that ever since his encyclical was published, the Vatican has received comments from people who want to be part of a broader conversation about AI. A Vatican commission is now working to promote dialogue, study, and investigation, and to find ways to make sure that AI does not destroy humanity or remove humanity from the conversation altogether. The pope’s language was careful. He did not say that AI is evil. He said that it could be dangerous, if it is allowed to exceed human control.
For all his concern, Leo said he was “relatively optimistic” that solutions could be found. That optimism was not naive. He understood the political and economic forces that push toward speed over safety. He knew that many people see AI as the key to power, wealth, and dominance, in a world where nations are already competing fiercely for technological supremacy. “I think there are enough people seriously interested in that and willing to look at that outside of the questions once again of power, who gets there first,” he said. In other words, there are still people who care about something more than winning. There are still people who care about humanity. The pope’s message was not a call to stop progress, nor was it a promise that everything would be fine if everyone simply talked a little more. It was a call to responsibility. It was a request that leaders, engineers, and ordinary citizens alike stop treating the future as an alien land and start recognizing it as something they are building every day. As the papal plane continued its journey home, Leo looked tired, but he did not look defeated. He looked like a man who had said what he needed to say, and who hoped that someone, somewhere, was listening. “We need to continue to invite political leaders, leaders of AI, social organizations, associations to come together,” he said. It was not a policy proposal or a technical roadmap. It was an invitation to remember that technology is made by people, and that people can choose to make it differently. Whether they will, of course, remains an open question. But the pope made clear that closing one’s eyes to the danger is not acceptable. The future, he seemed to say, is not something that happens to us. It is something we decide to do.