Rome Call for AI Ethics signed at the Vatican by Microsoft, IBM, FAO, and Italy

Filed retrospectively. Before the Specola kept its nightly watch, these were the observations that turned the telescope.

On February 28, 2020, the Pontifical Academy for Life convened the signing of the Rome Call for AI Ethics, a document committing its signatories to an ethical approach to artificial intelligence. The first signatories were Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life; Brad Smith, president of Microsoft; John Kelly III, executive vice president of IBM; Qu Dongyu, director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization; and Paola Pisano, Italy’s minister for technological innovation. David Sassoli, president of the European Parliament, also signed.

The Call sets out six principles for AI systems: transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality, reliability, and security and privacy. Its text states that “A.I.-based technology must never be used to exploit people in any way, especially those who are most vulnerable,” as reported by Fortune at the time of signing.

The document is voluntary and carries no enforcement mechanism, a limitation critics noted from the start. Its significance lies elsewhere. It marked the first formal compact between the Holy See and major technology corporations on the governance of artificial intelligence, and it established the working relationship between the Vatican and the AI industry that later observations in this archive record. Additional signatories, including other technology firms and representatives of other world religions, joined in subsequent years.