Rome, Italy. Pope Leo urged governments to slow down and closely regulate the development of artificial intelligence systems in his first major document, warning that they spread misinformation, prioritise conflict and risk leading the world down a path of unending war.
AI oversight
At a Vatican event launching the text on Monday, the first U.S. pope also said some autonomous weapons systems had advanced “practically beyond any human reach to govern them.” The event was also attended by Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, one of the world’s top AI companies.
Appeal to world leaders
In the lengthy document, known as an encyclical, Leo made a series of appeals to world leaders and called for AI data ownership not to be left solely in private hands. He also urged policymakers to protect workers’ rights and keep children safe from the technology, while calling for a cooling of competition between AI companies.
“What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating,” Leo said in the text, entitled “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity).
The pope also called for “robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility.”
Church teaching document
Encyclicals are one of the highest forms of teaching from a pontiff to the Church’s 1.4 billion members. Monday’s text, spanning nearly 43,000 words and addressing AI as its main theme, has been in preparation since Leo’s election as pope a little more than a year ago.
Warnings on war and multilateralism
The document also decried the number of wars roiling the world, lamented the weakening of multilateral organisations and warned that arms industry profits were a driving force behind conflicts.
“The past 60 years have been marked by conflicts of astonishing brutality, often affecting civilian populations on a massive scale,” Leo said in the English-language text.