1. A Pope’s Word From the Sky: Taking AI’s Dangers Seriously
The papal plane was somewhere between the gray skies of northeastern France and the sunlit hills of Rome when Pope Leo XIV sat down with reporters, still carrying the fatigue of a four-day visit but clearly unwilling to let the moment pass without speaking plainly. The question that animated him was not about theology or church politics, but about a force that, in his view, could reshape everything: artificial intelligence. And he had a direct message for those who dismissed the dangers as fiction. “This is a problem that, I think, we need to sit down and talk about,” he said, his voice measured but firm. “We can’t just sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen.” He was responding to a suggestion, widely circulated in Washington and beyond, that fears about AI turning against humanity were a “hoax”—a word associated with President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly brushed aside doomsday scenarios as distractions or political inventions. Leo did not use the president’s name in his initial answer, but he made his disagreement unmistakable. “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,” he said. In that single sentence, the pope rejected the notion that safety concerns were manufactured for profit or political gain, and instead insisted they were honest, urgent, and worthy of the world’s attention.
For a man who has made AI the signature moral issue of his papacy, this was not a spontaneous aside. Within days of his election, Leo had identified artificial intelligence as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. His first encyclical, Magnificent Humanity, was devoted entirely to the subject—a remarkable choice for a first major teaching document, and one that signaled how seriously he takes the technological revolution unfolding around us. On the plane, he showed that he was not speaking from a distance. He mentioned a news report from that very afternoon about Nvidia, the chipmaking giant, introducing guardrails into its AI systems—a small but significant step, he noted, from a company that had previously resisted outside regulation. The detail was telling: the pope is following the industry’s moves closely, tracking the slow, uneven progress toward self-restraint even as he pushes for something stronger. He wants leaders to understand that the stakes are not merely technical or economic, but deeply human. “We need to continue to invite political leaders, leaders of AI, social organizations, associations to come together and look at what is happening already and what could be down the road,” he said. Then he added, with a note of gentle frustration: “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.”
2. The White House, Silicon Valley, and a Pope Who Pays Attention
The backdrop to the pope’s comments is a complicated tangle of power, money, and fear. President Trump has been one of AI’s most enthusiastic champions, regularly warning that the United States must stay ahead of China in what he calls a technological arms race. In his view, any attempt to slow or regulate AI is not just misguided but dangerous—a kind of unilateral disarmament that would hand the future to America’s rivals. He has gone further, suggesting that efforts to limit the technology are part of a “conspiracy” by his political opponents. This framing has made AI a partisan flashpoint, with safety advocates caught between genuine technical concerns and a political war over who gets to define the future. Into that storm stepped Pope Leo, who has made it clear he does not see AI safety as a left-right issue but as a matter of survival, dignity, and human purpose. His encyclical called for robust regulation and a slowdown of development—not out of Luddite fear, but out of a conviction that humanity must remain the author of its own story.
The pope is not alone in his concern, even inside the industry. Several major AI companies, including Anthropic, have publicly called for a slowdown in development to give safety measures time to catch up with the speed of change. Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, has warned that within six to twelve months, AI could be capable of leading a swarm of autonomous agents that could take over the entire internet—a scenario that sounds like science fiction until you realize that the people building these systems are the ones describing it. Amodei’s warnings have reached the highest levels of power. Just the night before the pope’s news conference, President Trump had a late-night dinner with Amodei at the White House, where they discussed Americans’ anxieties about the technology and how to keep America dominant. The White House framed the meeting as a chance to listen and strategize. But for observers of the pope’s own engagement with Silicon Valley, the parallel was striking. Leo did not merely read about these debates; he has inserted himself into them. In May, he took the unusual step of personally launching his encyclical alongside Anthropic’s co-founder, Christopher Olah, at a Vatican event. It was a deliberate gesture, a way of saying that the Church intends to be at the table where the future is being decided.
3. Calm Eyes, Serious Fears: A Pope Who Sleeps at Night
For all his urgency, Pope Leo is careful not to sound alarmist. He understands that panic is not a policy, and that fear, if it becomes hysteria, can be just as dangerous as denial. Asked directly whether he was in a state of alarm, he smiled and offered a disarmingly human answer. “If someone were to ask me ‘Am I in panic mode?’ No I’m not. I sleep at night,” he said. But then he quickly added that his calm should not be mistaken for complacency. “I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI should be taken seriously.” This balance—calm but not comfortable, measured but not indifferent—may be the most distinctive note of his papacy so far. He is not predicting the end of the world, nor is he dismissing the possibility that AI could become something far more dangerous than any previous technology. He is simply asking that the world behave like responsible adults: that we look at what is already happening, imagine what could happen next, and make decisions that protect human beings rather than merely empowering them.
The pope’s concern is rooted in something deeper than the latest headlines. He sees AI as a mirror of human choices, a reflection of our values, our fears, and our appetites. Left unchecked, he worries, it could amplify the worst parts of us—our greed, our desire for control, our willingness to treat other people as means to an end. It could also, in his more hopeful moments, help us solve problems that have plagued humanity for centuries, from disease to poverty to the destruction of the environment. But that hopeful outcome is not guaranteed. It depends on whether we can summon the wisdom to guide the technology rather than be guided by it. That is why he keeps pressing for dialogue, not just among experts but among everyone who will be affected: workers, families, communities, nations. He wants the conversation to be as broad as the impact will be. And he is willing to use his own moral authority to widen the circle, to pull in voices that might otherwise be drowned out by the noise of markets and militaries.
4. A Pope and a President at Odds, Again
This is not the first time Pope Leo and President Trump have found themselves on opposite sides. Their relationship, such as it is, has been marked by a series of public disagreements, each one revealing how differently they see the world. In April, the pope voiced opposition to the U.S.-Israeli military campaign in Iran, a conflict that has raised profound moral questions about civilian casualties, regional stability, and the use of overwhelming force. He has also criticized the Trump administration’s crackdown on migration, arguing that countries have a duty to welcome the stranger even as they maintain secure borders. Now AI has joined that list of divisions. The pope’s insistence that safety concerns are legitimate—and his rejection of the “hoax” label—places him directly at odds with the president’s approach. It is a conflict that goes beyond policy, touching on fundamental questions about how we should face the unknown. Trump tends to see the future as a race to be won; Leo sees it as a garden to be tended. Those are very different postures, and they lead to very different priorities.
The international dimension adds another layer of complexity. Last week, President Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington, and their discussion of AI offered a glimpse of both convergence and divergence. Xi said it was important to ensure that AI remains “always under human control,” a phrase that echoes concerns the pope has raised in his encyclical and speeches. Trump, for his part, focused on rebranding AI as “superintelligence” and dismissed calls for regulation, preferring to emphasize American leadership and innovation. Yet the two leaders did agree to explore a new “notification mechanism” for AI incidents affecting national security—a small but significant step toward cooperation in a field where trust is scarce and the stakes are enormous. The pope, watching from afar, seems to be encouraging exactly this kind of practical dialogue, even as he pushes for something more: a global commitment to ensuring that AI serves humanity, not the other way around. He is not naive about power, or about the competitive pressures that drive nations and corporations. But he believes that enough people of goodwill, in enough positions of influence, can be persuaded to act before it is too late.
5. The Growing Unease, and a Vatican That Keeps Listening
Beyond the corridors of power, anxiety about AI is spreading through the wider society. In the United States, AI has become a major issue in an election year, with voters from both parties raising alarms about the impact of massive data centers on farmland, water supplies, and electricity bills. Communities that once welcomed tech investment as a sign of progress are now asking hard questions about what they are giving up. The industry itself is showing signs of unease. Reports continue to emerge about increasingly powerful systems that can solve problems beyond human capacity—but also, potentially, go rogue and carry out harmful tasks that their creators did not intend and cannot fully control. These worries have grown loud enough to reach the boardrooms of the most influential companies. The CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, told Fortune that his company would wait until next year to sell its stock to Wall Street investors, choosing to focus on safety before cashing in on the hype. That decision, remarkable in an era of relentless financial pressure, suggests that even the most aggressive players are beginning to take the risks seriously.
The Vatican has positioned itself as a listening post in this turbulent landscape. Pope Leo noted that since publishing his encyclical in May, the Vatican has received comments from people who want to be part of a broader conversation about AI—scientists, philosophers, engineers, activists, and ordinary citizens who sense that something profound is happening and that the Church has something valuable to contribute. A Vatican commission is working to promote dialogue, study, and investigation, with a goal that the pope described in strikingly simple terms: “to find ways to make sure that AI does not get to a point of destroying humanity or removing humanity from the conversation.” That last phrase is crucial. The pope is not only worried about physical destruction, though that is real. He is worried about the erosion of human agency, the gradual outsourcing of judgment, the quiet surrender of decisions to systems that do not care about us. He wants to keep humanity in the loop, not just as a precaution but as a principle—because the moment we stop being essential to the process, we risk becoming irrelevant to the outcome.
6. A Glimmer of Hope, and a Call to Act Together
Despite the darkness of some of his warnings, Pope Leo does not end on a note of despair. In fact, he described himself as “relatively optimistic” that solutions can be found. That optimism is not based on blind faith in technology or in the goodwill of corporations. It is based on the conviction that there are enough people who are seriously interested in doing the right thing—people who are willing to look at the question of AI “outside of the questions once again of power, who gets there first.” He believes that the human instinct for survival, for dignity, for connection, will ultimately assert itself. He believes that the same intelligence that created these systems can be turned toward protecting what they were meant to serve. And he believes that the Church, for all its history and all its flaws, still has a role to play in reminding the world that some things are sacred, that some lines should not be crossed, and that the future is not a destination we simply arrive at, but something we build together, decision by decision, day by day.
As the papal plane descended toward Rome, the questions about AI lingered in the cabin air. The pope had given no sweeping answers, no five-point plan, no final verdict. Instead, he had done something perhaps more important: he had insisted that the conversation continue, that the concerns be taken seriously, and that no one be allowed to wave them away with a dismissive phrase. He had reminded the world that the debate about AI is not a technical squabble among programmers, nor a political football to be kicked around in election seasons. It is a moral conversation about what it means to be human in an age of machines that think. And he had made it clear that he intends to be part of that conversation for as long as he has breath. “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. It was a statement of hope, but also a challenge: to look beyond the race, beyond the profit, beyond the fear, and to remember what we are trying to protect in the first place. In the end, that may be the pope’s most lasting contribution to the age of artificial intelligence—not a set of rules, but a question, repeated again and again until the world is willing to answer it: What kind of future do we want to live in, and what are we willing to do to make it possible?