Pope Leo rejects ‘paradise of machines’ at start of France visit

‘Although artificial intelligence systems can correlate data, they cannot answer questions that concern the meaning of human life, which is rooted in lived experience. Yet human beings cannot live without meaning.’

Pope Leo XIV warned his audiences against “losing our humanity amid a ‘paradise of machines’” on the first day of his visit to France, insisting that artificial intelligence must never take precedence over individual people.

Elaborating the theme of his encyclical Magnifica humanitas, he said at the the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) that “while ‘intelligence’ is attributed to computational systems, we struggle to recognise the inalienable dignity of human persons”.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can handle data quickly, he said, but it cannot “answer questions that concern the meaning of human life”. Without this truth, he said, “language becomes subject … to the arbitrary will of the powerful … treating even justice itself as though it were a commodity to be bought and sold”.

The Pope named no names in his comments, but signalled already during the flight from Rome that he was aware of current topics. When asked a question by a correspondent of CNN, the US television service barred from the White House by President Donald Trump, he said that “here, you are all welcome … good coverage, I think, is very important”.

He did not call for restrictions on AI, as several technology developers have, but France’s President Emmanuel Macron did in a speech welcoming the Pope. “Artificial intelligence must be a servant and not a master,” he said. “We must find a way to create an international organisation that reconciles technological progress, justice and humanism.”

The Pope also made allusions to steps taken in France that the Church opposes, saying he was concerned by trends that “risk turning science and technology into profit-driven ventures promoting genetic manipulation, surrogacy, the trade in human organs or the possibility of arranging one’s own death”.

The Church firmly opposed the recent legalisation of assisted suicide and euthanasia in France, a reform that Macron made into a campaign promise when he successfully ran for re-election in 2022.

Apart from his two speeches, the Pope rode in his popemobile through the Montparnasse and Latin Quarter neighbourhoods, lined with enthusiastic crowds, to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. He led a cathedral full of clergy, seminarians and faithful in vespers in the late afternoon.

Pope Leo read his first speech, one to civil authorities and the diplomatic corps, in French with a slight Spanish accent. His address at Unesco was in both French and English. He is due to lead a prayer service for young people this evening at the Stade de France in northern Paris.

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