Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch is pushing back against Pope Leo XIV’s recent call for AI to be “disarmed,” arguing that Europe can’t afford to fall behind U.S. tech giants in the race for advanced AI. “We’re all for peace, but if you look at our rivals and adversaries in the world, they’re using artificial intelligence … As long as we have adversaries that are threatening, and they are threatening, we do need to have our own capabilities,” Mensch told reporters when asked about the Pope’s comments on Thursday, Reuters reports. Mensch’s remarks came as Mistral announced it is building a new 10-megawatt data center near Paris and signed new deals with European giants Airbus and BMW. The French AI company is trying to establish itself as Europe’s homegrown alternative to U.S.-based AI rivals like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Microsoft. Meanwhile, Pope Leo XIV took on AI this week in a new encyclical that touched on everything from deepfakes and AI companions to the technology’s impact on the job market and warfare.
“In the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human,” the Pope wrote in his encyclical titled Magnifica Humanitas. Meanwhile, Mistral executives argue that the company, and Europe more broadly, need to achieve artificial general intelligence and eventually superintelligence as a matter of geopolitical security.
