Pope Francis make address at G7 Summit

Pope Francis has made history for being the first Pope to be invited to a G7 Summit, which was founded in 1975 as an intergovernmental forum.

Pope Francis, while not a member of the G7, was invited by the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni. The Pope’s address was part of an outreach session open to non-members of the G7 at the Summit. Pope Francis’ address focused on the threat of artificial intelligence in lethal weapons.

During the hours that he was present at the Summit, Pope Francis also met with several leaders including the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron, the Prime Minister of Canada, President Joe Biden, the President of Argentina, the President of Turkey, the President of Kenya, the Prime Minister of India, and the President of Brazil. In these meetings, the Pope discussed international conflicts including the potential ceasefire in Gaza, the end of violence in the Congo, and the fight against hunger and inequality. 

While the development of AI has become “a true cognitive-industrial revolution,” according to the Pope, there are many potential positive uses of this new technology, adding that Ai is “above all a tool.” Pope Francis also points out that we have always been creatures that produce tools to help develop our environment, which he described as our “techno-human condition.” But, the problem we are facing now is that machines are making choices instead of us, especially when it comes to autonomous weapons. The Pope said to leaders at the conference, ““In light of the tragedy that is armed conflict, it is urgent to reconsider the development and use of devices like the so-called’-lethal autonomous weapons’ and ultimately ban their use. This starts from an effective and concrete commitment to introduce ever greater and proper human control. No machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being.” 

The artificial intelligence programs used to make these choices are based upon algorithms that Pope Francis noted were “neither objective nor neutral,” but they make a choice based on data that can be subjective or opinionated in a certain way. Further, he said: “We would condemn humanity to a future without hope if we took away people’s ability to make decisions about themselves and their lives by dooming them to depend on the choices of machines. We need to ensure and safeguard a space for proper human control over the choices made by artificial intelligence programs: human dignity itself depends on it.” 

Pope Francis concluded his address by emphasizing the importance of “sound politics” in the challenges that we are being faced with today. 

For the full text of Pope Francis’ address, read here.