Pope Leo XIV warns health leaders that AI bias in AI risks turning patients into mere data, urges vision “as God sees” to protect dignity.
Newsroom (17/11/2025 Gaudium Press ) Pope Leo XIV cautioned health leaders and ethicists today that artificial intelligence and digital tools risk introducing hidden biases that reduce patients to “objects, data, statistics,” potentially creating unjust healthcare systems driven by profit or expediency rather than human dignity.
Speaking in the Clementine Hall to participants in the Pontifical Academy for Life’s Seminar on Ethics in Health Management, the Pope described the danger of technological systems being “manipulated, trained, and directed” to serve economic, political, or other self-interests. Such manipulation, he said, can generate “sometimes imperceptible” bias in information, resource allocation, and clinical decision-making, and even the way caregivers perceive patients.
“People will thus fall into a perverse manipulation that will classify them according to the treatments they need and their cost, the nature of their illnesses, turning them into objects, data, statistics,” the Pope warned.
He identified the antidote in a deliberate shift of perspective: learning to “see as God sees,” prioritizing the common good over immediate gain and pairing that broad vision with personal compassion that never loses sight of the individual’s fragility and dignity.
“These two visions will be the best antidote to ensure that our management structures do not lose sight of what is truly important: the good we are called to safeguard,” he said.
The Pope greeted the participants—who include healthcare administrators, bioethicists, technologists, and policymakers—as “pilgrims of hope” during the 2025 Jubilee Year. Their presence in Rome near the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul, he noted, transforms a professional seminar into a spiritual pilgrimage, inviting deeper reflection on the ethical implications of emerging technologies.
While acknowledging that the seminar’s agenda covers many complex topics, Pope Leo XIV singled out bias as the unifying threat that demands urgent attention from everyone involved in health management.
He closed by invoking divine assistance: “May the Lord help us to be faithful in this service.”
The three-day seminar, organized under the auspices of the Pontifical Academy for Life, continues through Wednesday and focuses on ethical governance of AI, big data, telemedicine, and resource allocation in Catholic and secular healthcare institutions worldwide.
- Raju Hasmukh
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