Pontiff tells gathering machines are tools that must not decide life or death
Pope Leo XIV told a gathering of artificial intelligence researchers and experts at the Vatican on Friday that the field’s most urgent challenge is to identify international institutions that will put ethical principles guiding AI development into practice.
The American pope, who has made artificial intelligence a key priority of his pontificate, said the principles are already known. What is missing, he said, are the institutions that can effectively safeguard the global common good.
“This calls for shared standards, independent oversight and clear mechanisms of accountability, so that decisions concerning the development and use of AI can be examined, challenged when necessary, and accompanied by appropriate remedies for any harm caused,” he told the meeting.
The gathering was held at the Vatican and co-sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Life, the Vatican’s bioethics think tank, and the Future of Life Institute. It gave the Vatican’s in-house AI commission a chance to engage with experts in the field.
Leo’s 2026 encyclical on artificial intelligence, “Magnificent Humanity,” called for robust regulation of the technology and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit.
On Friday the pope highlighted many of the encyclical’s key points — above all, his insistence that the future of AI is not predetermined, and that much will depend on the choices developers and political leaders make today.
He also stressed that machines are tools, not persons, and should not be granted legal status or delegated to make life-or-death decisions.
Among all the challenges facing the AI field, Leo said, the institutional ethical framework is the “most urgent.”