In a surprising turn of events, JD Vance has shared a supportive response to Pope Leo XIV‘s encyclical regarding AI. The vice president, during a recent interview, addressed Pope Leo’s call to adopt regulations on the growth of artificial intelligence, wherein he described the Vatican City leader’s assessment as “profound.”
JD Vance reacts to Pope Leo’s new warning
While speaking with NBC News on the telephone, JD Vance lauded Pope Leo’s apparent intention to evolve with changing times. Although he admitted having read only “bits and pieces” of the Catholic head’s encyclical, the Republican Party leader seemed impressed by the idea proposed by the Pope.
“What I read of it sounds very profound, and the sort of thing that you would expect and hope from a leader of the church,” he noted. “The thing about morality is that the principles never change, but the way you apply those principles does, because the world changes, right?”
Adding to his account on Pope Leo, JD Vance remarked, “You have new technologies and warfare, so you have to update ‘Just War’ doctrine. New ways of human beings interacting with one another, so you have to kind of rethink the entire Catholic social teaching in light of the new world that we live in. And I think that’s exactly what the pope is trying to do. So I’m glad that he did it.”
In his detailed address, the Pope argued that control over artificial intelligence shouldn’t be “concentrated in the hands of only a few people.” While he did call for “disarming AI,” Pope Leo clarified that it “does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity.” He further emphasized that “merely regulating it is insufficient.”
The Pope released the encyclical, his first one since his initiation, in the company of Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah. Notably, the Donald Trump administration had recently instructed all agencies to avoid using Anthropic services after the AI company denied providing the US military unrestricted access to its technology.
