Jensen Huang Answers Pope Leo's AI Criticism: 'We All Care About the Same Thing'

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has publicly responded to Pope Leo XIV's criticism of Nvidia's stance on AI safety, calling the pope's questions necessary and praising them as exactly the right ones to ask.

"He's asking all the right questions and he's thinking about all the right issues," Huang told Fortune in an interview Wednesday. "I'm looking forward to seeing them."

What started the exchange?

Pope Leo made his original comments at a press conference in late September. He told reporters that concerns AI could destroy the world are not "fake news" and deserve to be taken seriously. The remark read as a direct rebuke of President Donald Trump, who had told the UN General Assembly the previous week that fears about AI's dangers were a "hoax."

The pope didn't stop at general warnings. He singled out Huang by name, saying he was skeptical of Nvidia's announcement about AI guardrails because Huang has argued there should be no limits on the technology and no government regulation.

That skepticism has context. Earlier this month, Huang told CBS News he agreed with Trump that AI safety concerns were overblown. Nvidia has also launched a software platform aimed at stopping AI agents from breaching containment — a guardrail product pitched alongside a deregulation message.

What does Huang's defense look like?

Huang told Fortune he wasn't sure what the pope meant, but he pushed back hard on the implication that Nvidia is doing too little. "I'm not exactly sure what was intended, but the facts are that few are doing as much in advancing AI safety in a way that helps the entire industry as we are," he said.

He pointed to three concrete workstreams:

• Nvidia's open-source safety technology
• A framework for improving the quality of companies working with AI
• Efforts on audit, governance and standards-setting

"We are doing as much as we can, and the things that we're doing are going to dramatically help," Huang said.

He also framed the argument in engineer's terms. "We can always talk about hypothetical incidents that have not happened, but as an engineer, we should develop the technology and methodologies and practices to deal with the incidents that have happened," he said.

Where the two sides actually agree

Despite the friction, Huang claimed common ground with the pontiff on the end goal. "We all care about the same thing, which is an optimistic future where this technology has great positive impact in society while doing it with great responsibility, safety, and accountability," he said.

That's not a throwaway line. Pope Leo has warned about the dangers of AI throughout his 16-month papacy, including previously flagged risks of AI domination and what he has described as economic colonialism tied to the technology. He has also urged the world "to promote dialogue, study, investigation" on AI.

What does this change for the industry?

For practitioners, the exchange sharpens the industry's central tension: Nvidia sells both the accelerators powering AI and the safety tooling meant to contain it, while its CEO argues against government limits. The pope's pointed skepticism — from an institution with no commercial stake — puts pressure on that position in a way competitor critiques don't.

Expect the dialogue Huang says he welcomes to continue. The Vatican has spent over a year pushing AI to the top of its agenda, and Nvidia's guardrail platform will now be measured against a papal standard, not just a market one.