Emmanuel Macron advocated on Friday for the creation of an international organization to regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI). The statement was made while he was hosting Pope Leo XIV at the Elysee Palace.
The French leader delivered a speech in which he defended the concept of a secular state, based on the freedom to have or not have a faith and on the separation between the state and religious denominations.
The official simultaneously addressed the challenges posed by AI. Macron warned that technological advances should not remain concentrated in the hands of a few and advocated for the creation of an international framework that reconciles progress with justice and humanism.
The call of the French president comes as the European Union, which has lagged behind the United States in the field of AI, calls for a slowdown in the development of this field, especially the riskiest models of AI, reports Agerpres. The French vision is in opposition to the opinion of the US authorities, where President Donald Trump and most companies in the high-tech sector oppose slowing down the pace of artificial intelligence development.
According to Macron, there is a need for “an international organization that reconciles technological progress, justice, and humanism”, to prevent the “most efficient models from ending up in the hands of a few” and so that “the most exponential progress does not lead to a loss of control”, as “artificial intelligence must be a servant, not a master”.
The sovereign pontiff, on Friday, urged the international community to protect children and young people from new digital technologies and artificial intelligence, which “must support their development, education” and preserve their “freedom of thought and discernment”. The speech was delivered at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, where Pope Leon is on an official visit.
“Certain artificial systems have been given the name of our human ability to think: intelligence. At the same time, however, our ideas and relationships risk being impoverished by a process of dehumanization. In the absence of a common ethical foundation, the multiplication of communication channels risks spreading false information and giving rise to meaningless discourses, hindering rather than promoting dialogue. Artificial intelligence amplifies this problem. Although these systems can correlate data, they cannot answer problems related to the meaning of human life, which is based on lived experience. For a human being cannot live without meaning. Meaning is the oxygen of the spirit,” conveyed the leader of the Catholic Church.
The sovereign pontiff reiterated his call from May to provide an ethical foundation for artificial intelligence.