Pope Convenes Global AI Working Group that includes SCS ProfessorAs we apply artificial intelligence to more of the mechanisms of our world — from education and healthcare to transportation and finance — debates around AI’s role and power in society are sharpening.
In September, at the invitation of Pope Leo XIV, Alexander Waibel, a professor in SCS’s Language Technologies Institute, participated in the AI and Human Fraternity Working Group at the Vatican, to discuss and hammer out recommendations to ensure AI benefits humanity, and to suggest ways to mitigate AI’s potential risks. Pope Leo has called AI a critical matter and said that it poses “new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”
Alex Waibel (right), professor in LTI, pictured signing documents with other members of the Vatican Working Group on September 12, 2025.
In 2023, more than 350 AI industry leaders and researchers signed on to a one-sentence statement declaring AI an extinction risk on the level of nuclear war and pandemics. The list included such AI luminaries as Nobel Prize winner and former SCS faculty member Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, a co-winner of the 2019 A.M. Turing Award. Hinton and Bengio were both part of the 12-person September working group convened by Pope Leo, along with Waibel, Grammy-winning artist will.i.am., and other AI thought leaders.
