Pope takes aim at Trump over AI as pontiff and president reignite feud
The pope appeared to allude to Trump who described fears about the dangers to humanity from AI as a "hoax"
Pope Leo has said concerns that AI could destroy the world are not "fake news" in an apparent swipe at the US President.
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Speaking at the conclusion of a four-day trip to France, Pope Leo said: "I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI, should be taken seriously."
Appearing to allude to the US President, he added: "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 swipe marks a return to the war of words which erupted between Trump and the first US pope earlier this year.
Read more: LBC callers react to Trump's war of words with the Pope
Earlier this year the two exchanged broadsides, with Pope Leo openly criticising the Iran war and Mr Trump's threats to destroy Iranian civilisation as "truly unacceptable".
Mr Trump responded by blasting Leo as "weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy."
The latest intervention comes as experts and politicians have become increasingly vocal about the risks posed by AI to humanity.
Those concerns have been fuelled by a series of warnings, including Anthropic safety researcher Evan Hubinger's claim earlier this month that there was a greater than 10% chance AI “could kill all humans” within the next decade.
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."
However Donald Trump has said he will firmly resist attempts to rein in what he was called “super intelligence”.
Mr Trump, who has previously dismissed concerns about AI safety as a “hoax”, told the UN last week: “The United States totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme of control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now – hereinafter officially called super intelligence.”
Mr Trump added: “We will only encourage super intelligence.
“We’re going to encourage it, not rein it in. We’re going to watch it closely through the Department of Justice.
“The United States leads the world in super intelligence, and we’ll continue to do so safely and responsibly.”
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."