Pope Leo XIV on AI: Decisions Affecting Human Life Must Never Be Delegated to Machines
Pope Leo XIV on October 30 received participants in a meeting dedicated to artificial intelligence at the Apostolic Palace, stressing the importance of keeping the human person at the heart of this technology to avoid threatening the common good and reducing people to data points, Vatican News reported. Certain decisions, he said, must never be delegated: decisions affecting human life, freedom, and the use of force must always remain subject to effective, informed, and responsible human oversight.
The one-day meeting, "The Future of AI: A Dialogue Between the Vatican and the Scientific World on the Developments and Applications of Intelligent Technologies," was held that day at the Casina Pio IV and organized jointly by the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Future of Life Institute. In his address, the Pope offered five considerations drawn from his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, issued on May 15, 2026: the future of artificial intelligence depends on human choices; machines are tools, not persons; certain decisions must never be delegated; the technology should serve the common good; and institutions should put ethical principles into practice.
The Pope said societies have a responsibility to guide, modify, and, when necessary, reject applications of the technology. When a person is placed on a target list or entered into a border control database, he said, there is a danger that he or she will be reduced to a mere data point. For that reason, artificial intelligence must be "disarmed," and he encouraged the states meeting in Geneva in November to take concrete steps toward banning lethal autonomous weapons.
He also questioned proposals to grant artificial intelligence systems rights or legal personhood, saying machines do not have human experiences or relationships and that treating them as persons could obscure human responsibility and leave those who suffer harm confronting a faceless entity. A system that serves the human person reliably, he said, is of greater value than one that is exceptionally powerful but whose consequences cannot be adequately foreseen or controlled.
The Pope recalled Pope Francis's June 14, 2024 address to G7 leaders, in which Francis described artificial intelligence as a tool that inspires both excitement and fear and affirmed that no machine should ever be entrusted with the decision to take a human life.
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Source: GSM · USA
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：教宗良十四世2026年6月在西班牙蒙塞拉特向人群致意（资料图）。Sergio López Prieto 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Pope Leo XIV greeting crowds at Montserrat, Spain, in June 2026 (file photo). Photo by Sergio López Prieto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
