New Vatican document offers AI guidelines from warfare to health care

A Vatican document offers wide-ranging ethical guidelines for the application of artificial intelligence.

A Vatican document released Tuesday offers wide-ranging ethical guidelines for the application of artificial intelligence in sectors from warfare to health care, with an underlying call that the burgeoning technology must be used as a tool to complement, and not replace, human intelligence.

Pope Francis has issued several warnings about the risks associated with AI technology, and this new document by the Vatican’s doctrine and cultural offices expands on what the pontiff has already said. It comes as a new AI chatbot by Chinese tech startup DeepSeek has raised the stakes in the AI technology race, catching up with American generative AI leaders at a fraction of the cost.

The document underlines that human responsibility needs to grow in proportion to the new technology, and that the impact of AI’s uses in various sectors “may not always be predictable from their inception.”

“AI should be used only as a tool to complement human intelligence, rather than replace its richness, the document said in its conclusion.

The document warns that AI has the potential to increase instruments of war “well beyond the scope of human oversight,” which could provoke “a destabilizing arms race.” Weapons systems that can identify and strike targets without human intervention, removing “the unique human capacity for moral judgement and ethical decision-making,'' it said.

“No machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being,'' the document warned.

The document warns that AI is not a substitute for “authentic human relationships,” and cites its lack of empathy as a risk when anthropomorphising AI in areas such as child development or interpersonal relationships.