Pope Leo / Eternal City Tip-Off · In the news
Human responsibility at the center of AI
Original coverage by StartUp Beat ·
Photo: Massimo Digiovanna / MD Fotos, via StartUp Beat.
Coverage overview
StartUp Beat explores the Vatican’s approach to human responsibility in artificial intelligence and connects that discussion with the Eternal City Tip-Off. Its coverage includes Crescite CEO Eddie Cullen among the guests and reflects on the relationship between the company’s faith-led approach to finance and the responsibility of those building new technology.
Excerpt from StartUp Beat
Seventeen days after surgeons removed part of his right lung, Pope Leo XIV told a gathering of artificial intelligence researchers on Friday that the world no longer needs new ethical principles for AI. It needs institutions with the power to enforce the ones it already has.
The 71-year-old pontiff spoke at a one-day meeting held last month by the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Future of Life Institute, the AI safety nonprofit led by physicist Max Tegmark. He drew on Magnifica Humanitas, the encyclical on AI he released in May at a presentation that featured Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah.
Pope Leo’s sharpest warning concerned legal personhood. Granting rights to AI systems, he argued, would obscure human responsibility and leave people who are harmed with no one to confront.
Decisions touching life, freedom or the use of force must stay under informed human oversight, he said, and automated decisions should be open to examination, challenge and remedy.
Tegmark said he hoped the Vatican’s moral standing could influence how the technology is built.