The Pope at the G7: No machine should be able to take human life'

A 'historic' day for the presence of a Pope at the second day of the G7, led by Italy. It is the first time this has happened. From Biden to Zelensky to Macron, there were a dozen Heads of State and personalities that the Pope met during the bilateral talks on the margins of the G7 at Borgo Egnazia, in Puglia.

"Thank you very much again for accepting our invitation, thank you for the first time of a pontiff at the G7, thank you for your words that are clearly an inspiration to each of us". These were the words of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, after Pope Francis' address to the G7 session devoted to artificial intelligence, energy, Africa and the Mediterranean. "And thank you," she continued, "for your willingness to stay and listen to the speeches of the other leaders, because we know that it is very demanding". Then Meloni asked the press to leave the room, because the rest of the session is closed-door.

"In a drama such as armed conflict, it is urgent to rethink the development and use of devices such as so-called 'lethal autonomous weapons' in order to ban their use, starting already with an active and concrete commitment to introduce ever greater and meaningful human control. No machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being,' said the Pope in his speech to the G7 in Borgo Egnazia.

The Pope, before the Great of the Earth, stressed the importance of "sound politics" in order to "look to our future with hope and confidence". "World society has serious structural deficiencies that cannot be resolved with patches or merely occasional quick fixes. We must go to the root. There are things that must be changed with fundamental reset and major transformations. Only sound politics could lead the way, involving the most diverse sectors and knowledge,' the Pope said in Borgo Egnazia.

"Faced with the prodigies of machines, which seem to be able to choose independently, we must be clear that the human being must always be left with the decision, even in the dramatic and urgent tones with which it sometimes presents itself in our lives. We would be condemning humanity to a hopeless future if we took away people's ability to decide about themselves and their lives, condemning them to depend on the choices of machines". Thus Pope Francis, in a passage of his speech on artificial intelligence at the G7. 'We need,' the Pontiff added, 'to guarantee and protect a space of meaningful human control over the process of choosing artificial intelligence programmes: human dignity itself depends on it'.