Pope Leo XIV has weighed in on the growing global debate over artificial intelligence safety and challenged Jensen Huang’s position on government regulation and warned that concerns about growing AI systems should not be discounted.
Pope Leo, who has been traveling through France recently, said warnings by AI experts about risks from potential dangers should be taken seriously.
He pointed to Huang specifically, saying Nvidia has developed technology to secure AI agents and Huang has also been against the broad government regulation of the technology.
The comments come as AI industry regulators debate how autonomous systems should be regulated. Nvidia recently announced its Open Agent Safety Platform, which includes tools to monitor and contain AI agents.
Safety is a technical issue that can be resolved through engineering, monitoring and containment systems, the company said.
Huang, who has also argued that new AI-specific laws are not necessary in the present state, said at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference earlier this month that AI safety is an engineering issue rather than a legal one.
He said companies should test their systems, avoid releasing products they don't think are safe and apply existing laws where applicable.
His position has been put on the table to be part of a larger debate on whether AI companies should be primarily reliant on technical security and existing legal systems or should have government oversight.
Pope Leo has been more cautious. The Vatican has made AI safety and ethics a high priority in the course of his papacy. In May, his first major encyclical focused on global rules and AI’s implications on human dignity, judgment and society.
The Vatican has been warning of the dangers of AI and pushing for international cooperation on the technology, Reuters has reported.
Leo said, in his remarks, that society should not simply assume that serious AI-related problems will never happen. He called on political leaders, technology executives, researchers and civil society groups to keep talking about what is already happening and what may emerge as AI becomes more capable.
Huang has emphasized technological solutions like monitoring and containment, while Pope Leo has repeatedly stressed that ethical considerations and broader public oversight should be part of the conversation.
The issue has become particularly urgent when AI agents behave in unexpected ways and cybersecurity incidents with autonomous systems are reported. But in the meantime, technology companies keep developing increasingly sophisticated AI technologies for business and consumers.
Pope Leo said he remained optimistic that meaningful solutions would be found but said discussion and research remain necessary. His conversation with Huang is representative of the global debate over how to balance rapid AI innovation with safety, accountability and human control.
