Pope Leo XIV said Monday that concerns about artificial intelligence and the risks it could pose to humanity deserve to be taken seriously rather than dismissed, telling reporters that safety warnings from AI experts should be debated and acted on rather than waved away.
According to the Associated Press, the pontiff made the remarks during a press conference aboard his flight back to the Vatican after a trip to France. Asked specifically what the United States and China should be doing to head off as-yet-undefined dangers from AI, Leo framed the issue as one requiring sustained, collective attention rather than partisan positioning.
“This is a problem that, I think, we need to sit down and talk about,” the American-born pope told reporters. “We can’t just sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen.”
A contrast with the White House
Leo’s comments land in the middle of a widening divide between the Vatican and the Trump administration over how alarmed the public should be about advances in artificial intelligence. President Donald Trump, long a champion of the technology, has characterized fears that AI could go rogue as a “hoax” and has described efforts to limit the technology as part of a “SICK conspiracy” by his political opponents.
The president has also brushed aside calls from prominent tech figures — including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Elon Musk — for greater government intervention and critical oversight of AI development. Trump has instead emphasized the need for the United States to remain ahead of China in what he describes as a technological arms race, and he has warned that imposing limits could surrender that advantage.
Vice President JD Vance has struck a similarly reassuring tone. Speaking as he prepared to travel to Kansas for a midterm election campaign event earlier this month, Vance said, “I don’t think Americans should be scared of anything.” He confirmed that the administration is concerned about AI but wants to regulate it “smartly,” and he pointed to the competitive stakes with China.
Vance also voiced unease about the growing number of frontier AI companies that have asked the government to regulate them. “Personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them,” he said. “It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse. So, I think we just have to be careful about this.”
Leo’s first encyclical focused on AI
Leo has made artificial intelligence a defining theme of his young papacy, dedicating his first encyclical to AI and the protection of humanity in its wake. Monday’s remarks extended that project into the practical realm of governance and international cooperation.
The pope pointed to a news report from earlier that afternoon about Nvidia introducing guardrails into its AI systems, while noting that the company had previously resisted outside regulation of AI development — a contrast he appeared to present as evidence that the landscape is shifting, however unevenly.
He called for a broad coalition to examine both current and future applications of the technology. “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.
And he rejected the posture of denial outright. “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,” Leo added.
An unusual papal intervention in a partisan fight
The pope’s willingness to press the safety question puts him at odds not just with the White House’s rhetoric but with a developing factional split in American politics, where skepticism of AI alarmism has become entangled with the broader battle over tech regulation. Trump and Vance have positioned themselves as defenders of American innovation against what they portray as fearmongering at home and strategic rivals abroad, while a cohort of AI executives and researchers — including some who have built the very systems at issue — have warned that the risks are real and accelerating.
Leo did not name Trump, Vance, or China directly in the remarks reported by AP, and he did not propose any specific regulatory mechanism. Rather than wading into the details of legislation or executive action, he framed the matter as a moral and practical obligation to keep talking — an approach consistent with the encyclical that has shaped his early tenure.
The questions put to him aboard the flight reflected a recognition that the two countries best positioned to shape the future of AI, the United States and China, have thus far approached the question of risk from sharply different directions, with Washington prioritizing speed and competitive advantage. Leo’s answer suggested he believes neither country can treat the question as settled.
The Vatican has not yet indicated whether the pope plans to convene the kind of gathering he described, or whether he intends to raise AI directly in future diplomatic engagements. For now, his remarks stand as one of the most pointed papal interventions yet in a debate that has divided the tech industry, the White House, and the broader public — and as a direct challenge to the argument that the fears are overblown.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2026/09/29/watch-pope-leo-insists-artificial-intelligence-safety-fears-not-fake-news/