Rome Declaration
PREAMBLE
Humanity stands at a defining moment in its history.
More than eighty years after the dawn of the nuclear age, and at the threshold of the age of artificial intelligence, we are presented with an unprecedented challenge. Never before has scientific progress offered such extraordinary opportunities while simultaneously creating such profound risks to our common future.
When nuclear weapons were first being developed, the world had a chance to avoid living in a permanent dynamic of fear. We failed, and as a result, humanity has lived at the edge of nuclear annihilation.
With AI, a similar danger presents itself. AI built into nuclear systems leaves little time for, or even replaces, human judgement in a crisis. This technology changes the context in which nuclear-armed states compete with each other. AI will likely cause mass job loss and sharpen economic competition between nuclear-armed states. AI uplifts cyber attacks that can fracture critical civilian and strategic infrastructure. AI enables information warfare: Peace depends on a shared reality. Without facts there can be no truth; without truth there can be no trust; and without trust, no dialogue, no verification, and no restraint among nations.
The most advanced AI capabilities, computing resources, and data infrastructures are becoming increasingly concentrated in a small number of countries and corporations, creating significant asymmetries of power and limited incentives for cooperation. AI is a technology that causes economic, military, and social disruption, and is developing at a pace unprecedented in human history.
In the midst of a worsening nuclear arms race, we are embarking on an equally dangerous AI race.
Pope Leo XIV, invoking values shared across religious traditions, has called humanity toward an "unarmed and disarming peace." We reject the belief that lasting security can be built on fear, domination, or the permanent threat of mutual destruction. Security cannot rest indefinitely upon the reality of mutual destruction.
Conscious of our shared responsibility toward present and future generations, we adopt the following principles:
