Pope calls on G7 leaders to ban use of autonomous weapons

Pope Francis has made a historic address to G7 leaders urging them to recognise they have the power to decide if artificial intelligence becomes a terrifying or creative tool, and calling on them to ban the use of autonomous weapons in war.

In the first address by a pope to a meeting of G7 leaders, he said it should never be for machines to decide whether human beings live or die.

Related: Why the pope has the ears of G7 leaders on the ethics of AI

In an extended session, leaders from Latin America, Africa, India and the Middle East heard from the pontiff in one of the largest such gatherings outside the UN general assembly. The pope, who has mobility problems and met leaders in a wheelchair, received an especially warm greeting from his fellow Argentinian, President Javier Millei, and the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi. Both leaders hugged the pope.

“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,” he told the world leaders.

“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.”

Such a step would represent the darkening of the sense of humanity and the concept of human dignity, he said.

The 87-year-old has chosen to become a leading voice on the ethics of AI, telling his audience that it had the capacity to be both a terrifying and fascinating tool. He said it excited people and created fears at the same time, representing a chance to create a new social system, possible democratisation, access to knowledge, acceleration of scientific research, but also to create further injustice, dominance and turning a culture of encounter into one of discardment.

He said AI would influence medicine, the workforce, communications, education and politics.

Drawing on Robert Hugh Benson’s early 20th-century book about the anti-christ, Lord of the World, the pope said the danger of AI lay in the ability it contained for machines to make decisions independent of human beings.

“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,” he said, adding it was true of every tool since the dawn of time that they could be used negatively or positively.