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It was a quiet moment aboard the papal plane, somewhere between the shrines of Lourdes and the rooftops of Rome, when Pope Leo XIV was asked a question that has come to define our anxious age: What should the world’s great powers do about artificial intelligence? The question was not abstract. It came at the end of a four-day visit to France, a trip marked by solemn encounters with survivors of clerical abuse and sharp warnings about the moral decay of political extremism. But now the conversation turned to machines that think, systems that learn, and the terrifying possibility that they might one day outgrow their creators. Leo, the first American pope in history, did not wave the question away. He did not offer a tidy reassurance or a pious dismissal. Instead, he leaned into the uncertainty and said something that surprised many on board: the people warning that AI could pose catastrophic risks to humanity are not peddling nonsense. “This is a problem that I think we need to sit down and talk about,” he said. “We can’t just sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen.” His words were a quiet but unmistakable rebuke to a very different message coming from the White House. President Donald Trump had stood before the United Nations General Assembly just days earlier and called fears about AI a “hoax.” He had dismissed the push for regulation as a “globalist scheme” and suggested that those who wanted limits were part of a conspiracy by his political opponents. Leo did not name Trump directly, but his meaning was clear. “I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI should be taken seriously,” he said. “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 that single sentence, the pope drew a line between those who see artificial intelligence as a tool to be managed and those who see it as a prize to be seized. It was a moment of moral clarity, delivered at 30,000 feet, and it set the stage for a much larger conversation about the future of humanity.
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Leo was careful, however, not to sound like a prophet of doom. He has been called many things since his election sixteen months ago—reformer, traditionalist, the first pontiff from the New World—but he has never been accused of panic. When a reporter asked whether he lay awake at night worrying about machines overtaking the human race, he smiled and said no. “If someone were to ask me ‘Am I in panic mode?’ No I’m not. I sleep at night,” he said. That admission, delivered with a gentle laugh, humanized a debate that often feels abstract and terrifying. The pope is not a technologist. He does not claim to understand the architecture of neural networks or the intricacies of machine learning. But he understands power, and he understands the human heart, and he knows that every great technological leap in history has carried both promise and peril. He said he was “relatively optimistic” that solutions could be found, but only if the right people came together in good faith. “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. That phrase—“who gets there first”—is the crux of the global AI race. The United States and China are locked in a contest for dominance, each afraid that the other will build a superintelligent system first. Leo did not pretend to have a geopolitical solution, but he insisted that the conversation must include more than presidents and CEOs. He called on political leaders, AI developers, social organizations and associations to keep coming together “to look at what is happening already and what could be down the road.” He warned that the most irresponsible response would be to close our eyes and pretend the future will take care of itself. “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,” he said. It was a strikingly pragmatic message from a spiritual leader, one that acknowledged both the limits of regulation and the necessity of vigilance.
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The pope’s comments landed at a moment of intense political ferment around artificial intelligence. Just days before Leo spoke, President Trump had used his address to the United Nations General Assembly to pour cold water on the entire debate. He called fears about AI a “hoax,” dismissed regulatory efforts as part of a “globalist scheme,” and warned that his political opponents were using safety concerns as a “conspiracy” to undermine American innovation. He has repeatedly said that the United States must stay ahead of China in AI, and he has framed any attempt to slow development as an act of national weakness. That message has found support in some corners of the tech industry. Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, told CBS News this month that he agreed with Trump that safety concerns were overblown. But Leo, who had read a report about Huang’s suggestion that guardrails could be inserted into certain AI models, was quick to note the contradiction. “He’s the same one, however, that says there should be no limits placed and no government regulation,” the pope said. It was a pointed observation, and it captured the central tension of the AI moment: many of the same people who claim the technology can be made safe also resist the very mechanisms that would ensure that safety. The debate is not merely academic. On Tuesday, Trump was due to meet technology executives at the White House to discuss AI policy. According to sources familiar with the matter, those expected to attend alongside Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson included Huang, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, and OpenAI’s Greg Brockman. Google chief executive Sundar Pichai and SpaceX and AI executive Elon Musk might also attend. Johnson said the talks would focus on balancing innovation and oversight, but he warned that the United States risks losing the AI race to China if it decides to “hyper-regulate this.” Trump himself said on Sunday that he planned to have a late dinner with Amodei, a surprising overture to one of the most vocal advocates for slowing down development. The meeting was a reminder that the future of artificial intelligence is being decided not in academic journals or international treaties, but in boardrooms and political backrooms.
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If the White House meeting revealed the fault lines within the American establishment, the broader industry is even more divided. Some AI companies, including Anthropic, have publicly called for development to slow down so that safety measures can catch up. Dario Amodei, the company’s chief executive, has warned that within six to twelve months, AI could be able to lead a swarm of agents capable of taking over the entire internet. That is a staggering claim, and it has been met with both alarm and skepticism. But Amodei is not a fringe figure; he is one of the most respected voices in the field, and his warnings have been echoed by researchers and engineers who fear that the race for profit and prestige is outpacing our ability to understand what we are building. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has taken a more cautious approach in public, but its chief executive told Fortune that the company would wait until next year to start selling its shares to investors on Wall Street while it focuses on safety. Whether that is genuine prudence or a strategic delay is a matter of debate, but it signals that even the most commercially ambitious players feel the need to pay lip service to the idea of responsibility. Pope Leo has been paying attention to all of this. He made AI the subject of his first encyclical, Magnificent Humanity, published in May. In that document, he called for strong AI regulation and a slowdown in the technology. He said the Vatican had since received comments from people who want to take part in a wider conversation about AI, and he revealed that a Vatican commission was working to promote dialogue, study and investigation “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—“removing humanity from the conversation”—is key. Leo is not afraid that machines will become evil; he is afraid that they will become autonomous, and that human beings will be pushed to the margins of their own destiny.
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Leo’s concern about AI is part of a broader moral vision that he has articulated since the very beginning of his papacy. Within days of his election, he named artificial intelligence as one of the biggest challenges facing humanity. During his visit to France, he returned to that theme, saying that society must ensure AI serves humanity and does not become “another instrument of domination and injustice.” That phrase connects the technology to the oldest questions of power and inequality. For Leo, AI is not just a technical problem; it is a spiritual one. It asks us who we are, what we value, and what we are willing to sacrifice for progress. The same papal flight that carried him back to Rome also gave him the opportunity to speak about other issues that weigh on his conscience. When asked about the far-right gains in Germany’s recent state elections, he did not mince words. He said the “combination of these far-right points of view with a certain kind of religion” was “not an authentic expression of Christianity.” It was a striking rebuke, delivered with the calm authority of a man who has seen how easily faith can be twisted into ideology. He also spoke about his 90-minute meeting in Lourdes with seven people who were sexually abused by priests and other church workers in France. He said several of them “spoke about systemic abuse.” But he said he personally preferred to describe it differently, explaining that “sexual abuse is first and foremost a human problem.” That distinction may seem subtle, but it is important. Leo is trying to move the church away from a defensive posture, away from the idea that abuse is a scandal to be managed, and toward a deeper recognition that it is a sin against the dignity of the human person. In that sense, his approach to AI and his approach to abuse are connected. Both are about power, vulnerability, and the failure of institutions to protect the people they are meant to serve.
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What emerges from Leo’s comments is a portrait of a pope who is neither a technophobe nor a techno-optimist, but something rarer: a moral realist. He refuses to pretend that artificial intelligence is a passing fad, and he refuses to pretend that it is a savior. He sees it as a tool, but tools can be used well or badly, and the difference depends on the character of those who wield them. He is not panicking, but he is paying attention. He is not advocating for a luddite rejection of progress, but he is insisting that progress without wisdom is a kind of madness. His call for dialogue is not naive; it is a recognition that no single nation, company, or ideology can solve this alone. The United States and China may be rivals, but they share the same planet, and they will share the same consequences if AI goes wrong. Leo’s message is ultimately a human one. He wants us to sit down and talk, not because he believes the conversation will be easy, but because he believes it is necessary. He wants us to look at what is happening already and what could be down the road, not because he has the answers, but because the questions are too important to ignore. In a world where leaders like Trump dismiss the dangers as a hoax, and where executives like Huang insist that regulation is unnecessary, the pope offers a different path. It is a path of humility, caution, and hope. He sleeps at night, he says, but he does not sleep easily. He knows that the future is not written, and that the choices we make in the coming years will determine whether artificial intelligence becomes a blessing or a curse. That is not fake news. It is the truth, and it deserves to be taken seriously.