Pope Francis Raises the Red Flag on Artificial Intelligence
Pope Francis challenged leaders of the world's wealthy democracies on Friday to prioritize human dignity in the development and use of artificial intelligence. He warned that this powerful technology risks turning human relations into mere algorithms. As the first pope to attend the G7 summit, Francis brought his moral authority to bear on the Group of Seven, at the invitation of host Italy, to address a special session on the perils and promises of AI.
Francis emphasized the responsibility of politicians in ensuring AI remains human-centric. He stressed that decisions about using weapons or even less-lethal tools should always be made by humans and not machines.
"We would condemn humanity to a future without hope if we took away people's ability to make decisions about themselves and their lives, by dooming them to depend on the choices of machines," he said. "We need to ensure and safeguard a space for proper human control over the choices made by artificial intelligence programs: Human dignity itself depends on it."
The G7 final statement largely reflected his concerns. The leaders vowed to better coordinate the governance and regulatory frameworks surrounding AI to keep it "human-centered". At the same time, they acknowledged the potential impacts on the labor markets of machines replacing human workers, and on the justice system of algorithms predicting recidivism.
By attending the summit, Francis joined a chorus of countries and global bodies pushing for stronger guardrails on AI following the boom in generative AI kick-started by OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot. The Argentine pope previously used his annual peace message to call for an international treaty to ensure AI is developed and used ethically. He argued that technology lacking human values of compassion, mercy, morality, and forgiveness is too perilous to develop unchecked. Although he didn't repeat that call explicitly in his speech on Friday, he made clear the onus is on politicians to lead on the issue.
He also urged them to ultimately ban the use of lethal autonomous weapons, colloquially known as "killer robots". "No machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being," he said.
