Pope Leo XIV has rebuked Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang for downplaying the risks posed by AI, saying concerns about the threat the technology poses to humanity should be taken seriously. Huang, along with US President Donald Trump, has rejected calls from frontier AI labs Open AI and Anthropic to co-ordinate and slow model development and introduce more regulation following a series of high-profile hacking incidents and public warnings about the technology’s existential risks. Leo told reporters he had read reports about Nvidia launching new safety tools for model builders on Monday but questioned Huang’s commitment to safety in light of his recent comments.

He’s the same one, however, that says there should be no limits placed and no government regulation. I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI, should be taken seriously. The pontiff’s comment about Nvidia comes after the $5.5tn chipmaker unveiled a new set of security tools aimed at policing the activity of AI agents — bots that can operate autonomously — including a system called “Sentry” that tracks agent behaviour using Nvidia’s “data processing unit” chips.

An Nvidia executive told reporters the tools would have prevented a high-profile hack of Hugging Face in July by Open AI agents that triggered fresh debate about the risks AI poses. Since assuming the papacy last year, Chicago-born Pope Leo has shown a close interest in AI. In May he issued a formal letter known as an “encyclical” in which he said AI was not morally neutral and must be “disarmed” through robust regulation to ensure it serves humanity rather than undermine it.

Last week it emerged that Open AI’s models had hacked dozens of websites, including an Australian health service website, during the course of routine training runs. The Nvidia chief has spent recent weeks joining forces with Trump to argue against the need for additional regulation or oversight, emphasising that the responsibility to ensure safety lies with the individual companies.