In Disarmed And Disarming: Peace Is A Gift, a just-released collection of Pope Leo XIV’s speeches, sermons, and reflections, he underscores the point made in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence regarding the superiority of human conscience over “morally neutral machine procedures.”
“History has already seen us come close to nuclear catastrophe. Records recount that the decision of one man, Soviet official Stanislav Petrov, contributed to avoiding a possible global atomic war. It was 26 September 1983. The radars of the bunker near Moscow, where Petrov was on duty, signalled the launch of multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles from the United States toward the Soviet Union. However, it was an error of the Soviet satellite detection system. Petrov disobeyed orders and chose not to signal the presumed attack. It was a decision that was made with the conscience of someone who knew that that simple gesture could have caused millions of deaths. A world in which machines, albeit sophisticated and faster than us, are the ones to decide to bomb defenceless people would be truly frightening. The conscience of a single person can be worth the entire world.”
