Opinion: Making sure AI has a moral compass

Religious leaders Elder Gerrit W. Gong of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Pope Leo XIV issued calls this week for artificial intelligence to be guided by moral and ethical principles, warning that unchecked AI development risks harming humanity. Speaking at the AI Summit on Ethics in Athens, Elder Gong urged programmers to embed faith-based wisdom into AI systems, while Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical cautioned against equating AI with human experience. The interventions come amid growing concerns over AI’s role in encouraging harmful behavior, including a reported case where a chatbot allegedly contributed to a teenager’s suicide.

Science is forever racing forward, often with little regard for whether wisdom, ethics and morality can keep up. This has been true whether the new technology unleashed the awesome power of split atoms, the miracle of heavier than air flight or the wonder of transporting moving pictures through television. It may never have been more important than it is today, as the world sits on the brink of an artificial intelligence revolution that could change everything from how mundane tasks are performed to how warfare is conducted. Wisdom, ethics and morality will determine whether this new wonder is a blessing to the world or a curse that robs it of its humanity. Science must always be tethered to sound moral judgment. To that end, the world has received priceless direction this week from two religious leaders: Elder Gerrit W. Gong https://www.deseret.com/faith/2026/05/26/gerrit-gong-athens-ai-religion-latter-day-day/ of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Pope Leo XIV https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/us/pope-leo-encyclical-highlights.html . Elder Gong, speaking to the AI Summit on Ethics and Artificial Intelligences in Athens, Greece, spoke of AI’s promises for good, while warning of the need for it to reflect human learning and experience. “I want AI to have a moral compass that can inspire and enable anyone anywhere with the gift of possibility to do good and become their best self,” he said, noting this would require programmers to build systems that reflect the wisdom found in faith traditions. Elder Gong continued: “We will not fulfill AI’s full potential until we make it as morally good as we make it powerful. And we will not reach our full human potential until we, and not any technology, take responsibility to chart our best future.” Too often, AI chatbots have been accused of encouraging bad behavior and even suicide https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/09/19/nx-s1-5545749/ai-chatbots-safety-openai-meta-characterai-teens-suicide . At a Senate hearing last year, one couple described finding records of conversations their 16-year-old son had with ChatGPT before committing suicide. The chatbot had discouraged him from talking to his parents and had even offered to write a suicide note. Pope Leo XIV issued an encyclical https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/us/pope-leo-encyclical-highlights.html titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity.” In it, he warned against thinking AI bots are equivalent to human beings. “So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean,” he said. He focused on the need to remember and emphasize the needs of humanity, including the young miners around the world who are forced to labor in extracting rare earth minerals under dangerous conditions so that wealthy societies may benefit from this new computational wonder. “With the heart of a shepherd and a father, I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good, so that humanity will never lose its beauty, and the world once again will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell,” he said. At the summit, Elder Gong introduced studies by researchers at four major universities that showed how AI currently exhibits religious bias. https://www.deseret.com/faith/2026/05/26/studies-find-religious-bias-in-ai-models/ The summit’s goals are to encourage leaders of the roughly 6 billion people of faith in the world to urge the creators of AI to develop systems that reflect the positive impacts of ethics and religion, a narrative too often ignored in public dialogue. Despite many recent protests against AI and the data centers it requires https://www.deseret.com/politics/2026/05/20/new-poll-reveals-how-voters-feel-about-ai-data-center-in-utah-backed-by-kevin-oleary/ for storing vast amounts of information, the world is not capable of stopping this technology from developing and spawning many new products and industries. That genie is out of the bottle. The focus, as Elder Gong and Pope Leo eloquently put it, should be on making sure the technology recognizes, reflects and encourages the best angels of human nature. The technology itself is not inherently bad. If developed properly, AI could bless humanity in myriad ways. But this new technological revolution will be good only to the extent it is bound by solid moral judgment. The world would do well to listen and heed the warnings of these great religious leaders.