Pope Leo Rebukes Jensen Huang for Downplaying AI Risks

Concerns are 'not fake news'

Pope Leo XIV said on Monday that concerns artificial intelligence could destroy the world are not "fake news" and should be taken seriously, in an apparent rebuke of US President Donald Trump. He spoke at a press conference aboard the papal flight back to Rome after a four-day trip to France.

"I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI, should be taken seriously," Leo said. "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."

Criticism of Jensen Huang's position

The first American pope, who has warned of the dangers of AI throughout his 16-month papacy, also directly criticised technology chief executives who argue there should be no guardrails on the technology.

He 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 he remained sceptical. "He's the same one, however, that says there should be no limits placed and no government regulation," the pope said.

NVIDIA chief executive Jensen Huang told CBS News this month that he agreed with Trump that safety concerns about AI were overblown.

White House meeting with tech chiefs

Trump is due to meet technology executives 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 expected to 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 Elon Musk.

Johnson said the talks would focus on finding a balance between innovation and oversight, and warned that the United States risks losing the AI race to China if it decides to "hyper-regulate this."

A call to keep working

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." He added: "I think that there are enough people seriously interested in that … but we have to keep working. We can't just sit back and pretend nothing's going to happen."

The remarks followed his speech at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on September 25 on contemporary challenges related to artificial intelligence, during the France trip.

Cover photo: Hugorenie, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.