UN rights chief hails Pope's 'timely' AI appeal

The United Nations rights chief on Wednesday welcomed as "timely" Pope Leo XIV's manifesto warning of the risks of artificial intelligence, urging the world to remain focused on "shared humanity".

In an encyclical called "Magnifica Humanitas" (Magnificent Humanity), the first US pope on Monday set out a list of warnings about how the technology could impact humanity.

He warned among other things against "a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance".

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk hailed the pope's manifesto, describing it on X as a "timely appeal for dignity and justice in the age of AI".

"Our compass must remain our shared humanity," he insisted.

AI could be worth up to $4.8 trillion by 2033, a 25-fold increase in a decade, while concentrating its profits in the hands of a limited few, according to the UN.

In his encyclical, Leo sounded the alarm over AI-directed weaponry, saying it was "not permissible to entrust lethal" decisions to tech.

He called for "disarming AI", which he stressed "means freeing it from the mentality of 'armed' competition".

"To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity," Leo wrote.

Turk agreed. "Technology should serve people - not replace or control them," he wrote.