By Joshua McElwee
VATICAN CITY, Sept 24 (Reuters) – The Vatican warned about the risk of an apocalypse spurred by artificial intelligence years before major American firms sounded the alarm at the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday – a concern that Pope Leo is placing at the heart of his papacy.
Leo, who in May called on world leaders for global rules to oversee the industry, renewed his warnings about AI at a Vatican meeting on Thursday and is expected to do so again on Friday in a speech at the Paris headquarters of the UN’s culture and education body, UNESCO.
“This is not happening on day zero for the Holy See,” Rev. Paolo Benanti, a leading Vatican advisor on AI issues, told Reuters, referring to recent calls for a slowdown that have been endorsed by the CEOs of AI firms Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI, among others.
“The transformative power of AI … could produce a magnitude of societal changes that are very hard to predict,” said Benanti, an Italian academic who recently took part in the AI summit hosted by Britain’s King Charles.
The priest said he could not reveal details about the contents of the summit’s confidential discussions.
In a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Thursday, Leo said AI can benefit humanity, but it has introduced “new dangers to security and international peace.” He urged global leaders to “govern wisely” in overseeing the technology.
CARDINAL: THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY IS AT STAKE
Leo, the first US-born pope, has raised the possible dangers of AI development frequently throughout his 16-month-old papacy and first discussed the issue publicly on his third day in office.
In his May appeal, released as his first major document, Leo warned that AI systems spread misinformation, prioritise conflict and could lead the world down a path of unending war.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s top diplomat, reiterated Leo’s call for international regulation of the industry at an event in Rome last week, warning that countries cannot “go it alone” on the technology.
“The future of humanity is really at stake here,” Parolin said. The world, he said, needs “everyone’s involvement in establishing some common rules that can genuinely govern this phenomenon.”
Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah spoke at the Vatican’s launch event for the pope’s May document, known as an encyclical.
Asked if the Vatican is in ongoing dialogue with any AI firms, Benanti stressed the decentralized nature of the global church and said some discussions are being led by local bishops.
On September 16, the US bishops’ conference said it had created a new AI taskforce after several of its leaders met with executives that day.
“The dialogue focused on ways to keep any system of artificial intelligence at the service of humanity and the urgent need to address the real and present dangers such technology presents,” a statement said.
LEO WARNS ABOUT AUTONOMOUS WEAPONS
The Vatican began warning about the risks of AI in 2019, hosting two conferences that year on the possible dangers of the technology. The late Pope Francis warned attendees at one of the events that misinformation spread by AI could spark a world war.
The Vatican also teamed with Microsoft, IBM, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the Italian government in 2020 to issue a call for AI development that “does not have as its sole goal greater profit or the gradual replacement of people in the workplace.”
Leo has urged oversight especially for the development of weapons systems, such as those being used in the Russia-Ukraine war. He said in his encyclical that such weapons have advanced “practically beyond any human reach to govern them.”
The Vatican’s advocacy on the global stage against autonomous weaponry goes back decades, Benanti said, likening AI-powered drones to landmines that are indiscriminate with their targets.
The priest compared the Vatican’s warnings about the risks of AI to how popes have long called for nuclear disarmament.
“If nuclear weapons can destroy humanity … the manipulation of generative AI content in social spaces can destroy the capabilities of people to stay together as a society,” he said.
“Nuclear weapons have to be stocked inside facilities and you can count and control them. AI is not this visible.”
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)
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