Nvidia’s Jensen Huang responds to Pope Leo’s AI safety criticism—‘We all care about the same thing’

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is answering Pope Leo XIV’s latest AI warning with a mix of restraint and pushback. After the pope questioned whether AI guardrails are enough, Huang told Fortune that the concerns were “necessary” and “important,” and said the pontiff was asking “all the right questions.”

That’s the diplomatic version. The sharper part is that Leo had already taken direct aim at Huang, saying he was skeptical of Nvidia’s AI safety pitch because Huang has argued against limits and government regulation. The pope also rejected the idea that fears about AI destroying the world are overblown, calling those concerns something that should be taken seriously.

Huang, for his part, is standing by Nvidia’s record. He said he was not sure what the pope meant, but pointed to the company’s open-source safety technology, its framework work aimed at improving company quality, and its efforts around audit, governance, and standards-setting. Nvidia has also launched software meant to stop AI agents from breaking containment.

He framed the argument as an engineer’s problem, not a theoretical one. Hypothetical disasters are one thing, he said, but the industry should build tools and methods for incidents that have already happened. And despite the tension, Huang said he and the pope share the same goal: an optimistic future where AI has a positive impact while being handled with responsibility, safety, and accountability.