Pope Leo XIV doesn’t agree that worries about artificial intelligence wiping out humanity are overblown. Speaking to reporters on his flight back to Rome after a four-day visit to France, the first American pope said experts’ concerns about AI should be taken seriously and rejected the notion that such warnings are “fake news,” a clear contrast with President Trump’s recent dismissal of AI doomsday talk as a “hoax,” Reuters reports. While saying he’s not in a panic over the possibilities, Leo said safety issues should be discussed and acted on, per the AP.
Leo also addressed the opposition of tech leaders to regulation. He noted reports that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had floated technical ways to build guardrails into AI, while opposing limits and government rules. Huang recently told CBS News he agrees with Trump that safety worries are exaggerated. Trump is to meet Tuesday at the White House with Huang, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, and possibly Google’s Sundar Pichai and SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk for talks that House Speaker Mike Johnson said will weigh innovation against oversight. Leo urged continued global work to ensure AI never reaches a point where it could “destroy humanity,” warning, “We can’t just sit back and pretend nothing’s going to happen.”