Pope Leo on Monday said concerns that artificial intelligence could destroy the world are not "fake news" and should be taken seriously, in an apparent rebuke of US President Donald Trump.
The first US pope, who has warned of the dangers of AI throughout his 16-month papacy, also directly criticized technology CEOs who argued there should be no guardrails on the technology.
"I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI, should be taken seriously," the pontiff said in a press conference on his flight back to Rome after a four-day trip to France. "I don't think that that is fake news, as some have said."
Trump told the UN General Assembly last week that he believed fears about the dangers to humanity from AI were a "hoax."
The pope said he had read on Monday that the head of chipmaker Nvidia had announced there could be a way to insert guardrails into certain AI models. But Leo expressed scepticism, adding: "He's the same one, however, that says there should be no limits placed and no government regulation."
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang told CBS News this month that he agreed with Trump that safety concerns about AI were overblown.
Trump is to meet with tech CEOs on artificial intelligence on Tuesday at the White House. Huang, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Greg Brockman are among those who will meet Trump and House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, according to sources familiar with the matter. Other possible attendees include Google CEO Sundar Pichai and SpaceXAI executive Elon Musk.
Johnson said the talks would focus on finding a balance between innovation and oversight and warned that the US risks losing the AI race to China if it decides to "hyper-regulate this."
Leo urged the world "to promote dialogue, study, investigation, to find ways to make sure that AI does not get to a point where it could destroy humanity."
"I think that there are enough people seriously interested in that … but we have to keep working," said the pope. "We can't just sit back and pretend nothing's going to happen."