I still don’t really have a sense of who Pope Leo (Pope Bob) really is. He’s either a mild-mannered man from Chicago, or he’s the perfect political foil to the worst state actors in the world. Or both, I guess. Pope Bob was in France in recent days for his first visit to the country as the Holy Father. He drew huge crowds, he visited Notre Dame, he met with Emmanuel Macron, he met with Monaco’s Prince Albert and Princess Charlene. And on the plane ride back to Italy, Pope Bob spoke to journalists about AI.

In a speech to French President Emmanuel Macron and other government and diplomatic authorities Friday, Leo warned that a “paradise of machines” risked undermining humanity, posing fundamental questions about what it means to be human in the age of artificial intelligence.

He appealed to AI developers and political leaders responsible for regulating them to slow down, an appeal that several top AI companies seem to have taken to heart recently.

“If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a ‘paradise of machines’ invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for education in ethical discernment and the capacity to acknowledge the moral good,” he said.

Leo earlier told reporters that he was pleased his message was being heard and said he hoped the dialogue that the Vatican initiated with tech companies would continue. “And I think from their perspective, many of them, they’re very much open to looking for ways of making sure that AI does not displace or ultimately destroy humanity, but rather is a tool for human beings,” he said.

[Days later] Pope Leo XIV told reporters that warnings from AI researchers should be “taken seriously” and are not “fake news.” Why it matters: Leo is leading the Catholic Church as AI raises sweeping societal concerns, and he has made confronting those risks a key part of his papacy. As the first American pope, Leo is also positioned to counter President Trump, who called concerns over AI safety a “HOAX” and a “SICK conspiracy.”

Closing his trip to France, Leo told reporters aboard a plane that he’s not in “panic mode” over AI fears. But he continued, saying, “I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI, should be taken seriously. I don’t think that is fake news, as some have said, to try and cause whether financial or some other kind of benefit.”

Leo later added, “We have to keep working, we can’t sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen.”

[From NBC News & Axios]

I think it’s good that we’ve got a Chicago Pope who seems legitimately concerned about AI encroachment on daily lives and “the paradise of machines.” The pope’s comments on the plane were pretty much a direct contradiction of Donald Trump’s dumbass “AI is great, don’t worry about it.”

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.