Pope Leo XIV to AI Scientists: Target Lists and Border Databases Must Not Reduce People to Data Points; Urges Geneva Ban on Lethal Autonomous Weapons

Pope Leo XIV addressed participants in a dialogue between the Vatican and the scientific world on AI, organized jointly by the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Future of Life Institute. He applied his encyclical 2026-05-25–pope-leo-xiv-magnifica-humanitas-encyclical-disarm-ai-concentration-tech-power to current systems.

“When a person is placed on a target list or entered into a border control database, there is a danger that he or she will be reduced to a mere data point,” he said. Decisions on life, freedom and force, he said, “must always remain subject to effective, informed and responsible human oversight.” He said artificial intelligence must be “disarmed,” and encouraged “the States meeting in Geneva in November to take concrete steps toward banning lethal autonomous weapons.”

He said “machines are tools, not persons,” and that proposals for legal personhood risk “obscuring human responsibility.” He said what is currently needed includes “effective international institutions.”

Update (2026-09-04, report adoption date): The address does not name the Geneva meeting; the UN lists the CCW Review Conference in November

The address does not name the Geneva meeting it refers to. The UN Office for Disarmament Affairs lists the Seventh Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons at the Palais des Nations in Geneva in November 2026. The Conference’s Group of Governmental Experts on lethal autonomous weapons systems adopted its final report at its second 2026 session, and the Review Conference documents include a proposal that the Group negotiate a new Protocol on these weapons.