At open-air Mass in Paris, Pope Leo warns of losing humanity amid AI-driven ‘paradise of machines’

Pope Leo XIV celebrated an open-air mass on Saturday in front of hundreds of thousands of believers on the French capital's Place de la Concorde and adjoining Champs-Elysees.

According to the Associated Press, the Vatican estimated that 800,000 people attended — about 200,000 more than the number who had registered in advance.

The leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics is on a four-day trip to France, a secular country with deep Catholic roots, on the first official papal visit to France in nearly two decades.

It began on Friday with his arrival and prayer at the restored Notre Dame, the first by a pope since the cathedral's devastating 2019 fire.

It continued Saturday night when Leo arrived in Lourdes in southern France, one of the Catholic Church’s most-visited shrines.

The turnout testified to the church’s lasting influence in France despite declining attendance and secularising trends that have emptied churches across Europe.

AI ‘paradise of machines’

On Friday, an estimated 300,000 people turned out to see the pontiff as he waved from his popemobile on the way to the Notre Dame Cathedral.

"There is a sense of fervour reminiscent of that experienced over 40 years ago with John Paul II," Francois Mabille, director of the Geopolitical Observatory on Religion, told broadcaster RMC.

On Friday, Pope Leo stressed the need for ethics to avoid an AI-driven "paradise of machines" and, as war rages in Ukraine for a fifth year, urged France to remain a "tireless champion of peace".

He repeated his frequent appeal for the world to reconsider the development of artificial intelligence, telling French leaders that AI could create a future where "a paradise of machines" takes control of the Earth.

"If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for education in ethical discernment," he said beside French President Emmanuel Macron.