Cisco CEO Signs AI Ethics Pledge at Vatican After Meeting With Pope Francis
On Wednesday, the CEO of Cisco Systems became the latest tech behemoth to endorse the Church’s call for the moral and responsible application of artificial intelligence by signing the artificial intelligence ethics pledge.
The Pontifical Academy for Life’s Rome Call for AI Ethics was signed by Pope Francis on April 24 after a private meeting between the CEO of the global digital communications conglomerate and Pope Robbins.
The document was previously signed by and was first published by the Pontifical Academy in February 2020.
CEO of Microsoft Brad Smith and executive John Kelly III of IBM.
The Rome Call emphasizes the necessity of “algor-ethics,” which is defined as the moral application of AI in accordance with the values of openness, responsibility, accountability, impartiality, dependability, security, and privacy.
The text calls for the “benefit of humanity and the environment” in equal measure and cites the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to highlight the equal rights and dignity of all people, which AI must uphold and protect.
Three things must happen for “technological advancement to align with true progress for the human race and respect for the planet” according to this statement: it must be inclusive, have humanity’s best interests at heart, and treat the environment with a highly
According to Robbins, “Cisco’s core belief that technology must be built on a foundation of trust at the highest levels in order to power an inclusive future for all” is aligned with the principles of the Rome Call.
The Vatican was heavily involved in the discussion of artificial intelligence ethics years before the widely publicized release of the GPT-4 chatbot system, which was created by the San Francisco start-up OpenAI. In 2016 and 2020, the Vatican hosted high-level discussions on the ethics of artificial intelligence with scientists and tech executives.
In April 2021, the pope founded the RenAIssance Foundation, a nonprofit organization within the Vatican, to encourage anthropological and moral analysis of the impact of emerging technologies on human life.
Additionally, Pope Francis decided to focus his 2024 peace message on artificial intelligence,
