Pope and US senator's fear of uncontrolled AI justified

AI could undermine human society if it becomes uncontrollable.[File, Standard]

Prominent personalities have raised concern over the increasing number of cyberattacks, especially the supposed ability of the latest cyber development, Artificial Intelligence (AI), to outsmart its makers and take over the world. The takeover would make humans irrelevant, as it would do whatever captured its fancy, which might include tinkering with various nuclear codes. Without human feelings to moderate it, the AI might go rogue and decide to test and activate nuclear bombs from each nuclear power before the humans can notice and try to act. Such a doomsday possibility unites Pope Leo XIV, who leads 1.4 billion Catholics scattered all over the world, and Senator Bernie Sanders, who represents the state of Vermont in the United States Senate. Both Leo and Sanders are vocal on the dangers that AI poses.

In itself, AI is the latest technological wonder that the human mind has conjured, in theory, to lighten the burden of work. Technology helped in imperial conquests, giving military advantage to whoever had it over the other. In the 20th and 21st centuries, nuclear balancing capabilities emerged, with the concept of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ sobering rivals back to some common sense. When big nuclear powers dealt with those they considered ‘lesser states’ to be denied that destructive capacity, however, the sobering was not extended to them.

Nor did the sobering stop the invention of faceless flying small weapons called ‘drones’ that ‘lesser states’ manufacture and deliver in large quantities for both domestic and international confrontations. Drones have become instruments of ‘diplomatic’ dealings in which mid-level powers give/donate/sell in exchange for the recipient caving into particular demands such as kidnapping and repatriating resident foreign nationals for incarceration in the drone donor country. There is fear that advanced AI might misuse the drone diplomacy example to force weak countries to accept things that are hostile to their primary interests. Besides, the number of cyberattacks and AI-related errors is increasing.

The high likelihood of AI destroying the human socio-economic fabric led Leo to issue his encyclical, ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ early in his pontificate. He was not the first pope to do so, given that, in the last 130 years, various popes issued encyclicals to deal with critical challenges of the day.

Pope Leo XIII, after whom Leo XIV reportedly models himself, complained about labour exploitation and social upheavals in his 1891 Rerum Novarum. Pope Francis issued two encyclicals, Laudato si and Fratelli tutti about environmental destruction and brotherhood of man irrespective of one’s faith because God could be working through those of other faiths. For Leo XIV, the danger to human survival is the uncontrollability of AI, which can go rogue. The belief that human inventors can always control their inventions, he argues, is not reliable to guarantee safety against self-destruction. What would happen if the inventor of a particular rogue AI is incapacitated and unable to counter independent AI commands?

This is the same concern that Sanders expressed by threatening to regulate and partially nationalise the AI industry. He told the heads of Anthropic, Meta, and OpenAI: “In the interests of humanity...Pause AI development....It is not too late to avoid disaster. Stop building machines that humans cannot control.” With a reputation as a liberal US politician, his call for AI restraint and regulation could not be ignored. The New York Post, in an editorial on June 21, 2026, dismissed him as “monstrous” and having a “Communist fever dream” that is “fundamentally tyrannical.” With Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he sponsored a cyber regulation law.

The threat that ’roguish’ AI might pose to humans is real and worries big and small countries. While AI has its positive uses, its negative attributes include making people lazy, losing their moral compass, and could lead to world destruction if it is independent of human control. This gloomy possibility worries Leo, Sanders, and some Kenyans.