Pope Leo Heralds AI Doom Warnings as Trump Courts Tech Titans

Pope Leo’s declaration that warnings about the malevolent potential of AI cannot be dismissed as “fake news” sets up a clash between the Bishop of Rome and President Trump.The pontiff, speaking aboard his plane after a trip to France, told reporters, “I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI, should be taken seriously. I don’t think that is fake news.” He added, “We have to keep working, we can’t sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen.”Mr. Trump has struck a decidedly different note, writing on Truth Social earlier this month that concerns over the new technology’s safety are a “HOAX” and a “SICK conspiracy.” He has declared that “whichever side wins AI, wins” and on Tuesday was convening a host of chief executives of AI companies to map out what the White House calls a new “golden age.”The White House gathering includes Mr. Trump, Speaker Johnson, and executives including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Palantir’s Alex Karp, and OpenAI’s Greg Brockman. Mr. Trump rejects calls for regulation. Mr. Johnson has signaled support for some oversight ahead of the midterm elections. The president’s vow that “I’m not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution” stands in marked contrast to the pope’s wariness. In France, the pontiff warned that a “paradise of the machines” could undermine humanity. He mused that “while ‘intelligence’ is attributed to computational systems, we struggle to recognize the inalienable dignity of human persons.” Pope Leo has written of the need to “disarm” AI to prevent it “from dominating humanity.”So central has the priest formerly known as Robert Prevost made artificial intelligence to his papacy that the papal name he chose, Leo, is a reference to Pope Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 to 1903 — at the peak of the Industrial Revolution. This pope, like Mr. Trump, reckons that the Church faces “another industrial revolution” powered by AI. Pope Leo warned the French that AI is “invading and conditioning our daily lives.”In May, the pope published the first encyclical of his papacy, “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” That encyclical asserts that “Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.” Pope Leo contends that “calling for prudence, rigorous evaluation and even, at times, a slower pace in adopting AI does not mean opposing progress; instead, it is an exercise of responsible care.”Back aboard the papal plane, the pontiff quipped with respect to AI, “If someone were to ask me, ‘Am I in panic mode?’ No, I’m not. I sleep at night. I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI, should be taken seriously.” Among those concerns are those raised by the chief executive officer of Anthropic, Mr. Amodei. He is among the chief executives at the White House Tuesday for Mr. Trump’s summit.Mr. Amodei writes in an essay published earlier this month, entitled, “We Must Pace the Frontier,” that “we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.” Mr. Amodei proposes a model of “pacing the frontier,” meaning “ensuring companies take adequate time to align and safeguard their models.” Messrs. Trump and Amodei dined together at the White House on Sunday night.AI is hardly the first issue over which Mr. Trump and the Successor to Saint Peter have crossed swords. The pope said with respect to the war with Iran that “God does not bless any conflict” and denied that the attack on the mullahs amounted to a “just war.” In response, the president asserted that the pope is “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy.”

Pope Leo Heralds AI Doom Warnings as Trump Courts Tech Titans

Pope Leo Heralds AI Doom Warnings as Trump Courts Tech Titans

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