Pope Leo Says AI Safety Concerns Not ‘Fake News’ as Trump Champions Tech

Pope Leo XIV has dismissed concerns that artificial intelligence warnings are "fake news," emphasizing the need to address the technology's potential catastrophic risks. The pontiff, speaking aboard a papal plane returning from France, stated that it is crucial to "sit down and talk about" the issue. President Donald Trump, on the other hand, has labeled AI safety concerns a "hoax," a stance that has drawn criticism from experts in the field.

Trump is reportedly planning to meet with industry leaders in an effort to bridge the gap between the administration's embrace of AI and the warnings from its creators. The White House lunch, scheduled for Tuesday, will feature Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. This follows Trump's Sunday dinner with Amodei, who has cautioned about the potential dangers of increasingly powerful AI systems.

Pope Leo, while not expressing panic over the technology, stressed that AI experts' concerns should be taken seriously. He argued that dismissing these warnings as "fake news" serves no purpose other than to benefit financially or otherwise. This evolving story is subject to updates and can be reached by Newsweek editors, Samantha Beech and Sam Wilson.