What do the world's leaders say about AI?

People who are listened to have been saying what AI is for and what it must not be allowed to do, and most of it has never been gathered in one place. This register holds 125 verified quotations from 121 people and bodies who are not in the business of building AI: heads of state and government, monarchs, religious leaders, central bankers and economists, chief executives, commentators, artists and writers, scientists, and the unions and workers on the receiving end. Every line was read at its source and checked again by a second pass, and each is given with the date, the occasion and a link. Read across it and one question recurs in every group, whatever the country or the creed: who decides what a machine may decide, and what people must remain able to do.

How the register was compiled#

Each quotation was found by searching the last decade of speeches, addresses, encyclicals, shareholder letters, columns, podcasts and interviews, then read on the page that carries it. A second, independent pass re-opened every source and compared the words one by one; anything that could not be found in the source, or that a writer had stitched from separate remarks, was cut. Where a quotation begins or ends inside a sentence, an ellipsis says so. Straight quotation marks and en dashes are used throughout, which is house style rather than the source's typography. Roles are as at the time of speaking. Translations are marked: official ones where a government or the Holy See published them, otherwise the outlet's.

Leaders of AI companies and of the large technology firms are left out. Their statements are commercial as well as personal, and this site reads them against what their companies do, on pages such as whether an evaluator paid by the company can be independent and whether AI development should be paused. This register is for everyone else.

Heads of state and government#

13 heads of state, government and the United Nations, 13 quotations. All of them, by region, on what do presidents and prime ministers say about ai.

AI isn't something locked away behind the walls of blue-chip companies…It's a force for change that will transform the lives of working people for the better.

Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, United Kingdom. Speech launching the AI Opportunities Action Plan, University College London, 13 January 2025. gov.uk. He presented AI adoption as a route to improving public services and living standards rather than a threat to be contained.

Machines will not answer these questions. We can do it; politics must do it. And it is politics that must guarantee that artificial intelligence remains human-controlled and human-centric.

Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy, Italy. Address to the United Nations Summit of the Future, New York, 23 September 2024. Permanent Mission of Italy to the UN (italyun.esteri.it). Official English translation from Italian. She argued that the direction of AI is a political choice that cannot be delegated to the technology itself.

Humans must never become mere data points or raw material for machines. Instead, AI must become a tool for global good, opening new doors of progress for the Global South.

Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, India. Signed article by the Prime Minister, 'Shaping a Human-centric future for AI', published around the India AI Impact Summit 2026, February 2026. Embassy of India, Juba (indembjuba.gov.in). He argued that AI should amplify human intent and serve the Global South rather than treat people as inputs.

When few control the algorithms and digital infrastructures, we are not talking about innovation, but about domination.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President of Brazil, Brazil. Speech at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, New Delhi, February 2026. Tech Policy Press. Official English translation from Portuguese. He argued that concentration of AI infrastructure and data in a few firms and countries amounts to a new dependency for the Global South.

Monarchs and royals#

7 royals, 8 quotations. All of them, by region, on what do kings, queens and princes say about ai.

Yet, those who have created these technologies are now increasingly warning that AI risks developing darker capacities – perhaps even to take life. In this regard, if I may say so, there seems urgency in adequately considering the existential dangers of such technologies falling into the wrong hands, and being used in potentially catastrophic ways. Surely, we need sufficient means of control before it is all too late?

King Charles III, King of the United Kingdom, United Kingdom. Speech to the AI summit he convened at Dumfries House, Ayrshire, Scotland, 17 September 2026. The Scotsman. He was addressing AI company leaders and researchers he had gathered, arguing that safeguards should be settled before the technology advances further.

We also do not want a world for our children in which disagreements and conflicts are continuously escalated, and where we threaten and discredit each other, both online and offline. Nor a world without freedom, where dictators claim victory at the expense of democracy and justice. And where we have become slavish followers of all-powerful, soulless algorithms.

King Willem-Alexander, King of the Netherlands, Netherlands. Annual Christmas address, 25 December 2025. NL Times. Outlet's translation from Dutch. He was listing the kinds of world he did not want the next generation to inherit.

Machines are looking closely at the society we've built, and they're envisioning a future that looks a lot like our past.

Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Queen of Jordan, Jordan. Remarks at the 'Advancing the Global Goals with AI' session, New York, 25 September 2019. queenrania.jo. She was arguing that AI systems trained on existing data reproduce existing inequalities unless people correct for them.

Religious leaders#

10 religious leaders and bodies, 12 quotations. All of them, by region, on what do religious leaders say about ai.

We need to ensure and safeguard a space for proper human control over the choices made by artificial intelligence programs: human dignity itself depends on it.

Pope Francis, Pope, Head of the Catholic Church, Vatican City. Address to the G7 session on artificial intelligence, Borgo Egnazia, Puglia, 14 June 2024. vatican.va. Official English translation from Italian. Addressing G7 leaders, he argued that decisions about human lives must remain with human beings rather than with machines.

Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice. In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity's problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.

Pope Leo XIV, Pope, Head of the Catholic Church, Vatican City. Encyclical Letter 'Magnifica Humanitas', paragraph 9, 15 May 2026. vatican.va. Official English translation from Latin/Italian. In his first encyclical he argued that technology carries the intentions of those who build and govern it, so the choice is about how it is directed rather than whether to accept it.

This poses the question: does AI make human life more human? The question matters for those designing, developing and building the technology as they think about what ideologies and belief systems should underpin the models, for there is no such thing as value-neutral technology.

Sarah Mullally, Archbishop of Canterbury, United Kingdom. Opening speech in the House of Lords debate she tabled, 'Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society', 5 June 2026. Hansard, UK Parliament. She proposed a single test for developers, regulators and users: whether the technology makes human life more human.

Central bankers, institutions and economists#

18 central bankers, finance ministers, institution heads and economists, 18 quotations. All of them, by region, on what do central bankers and economists say about ai.

It is like a tsunami hitting the labor market, especially in advanced economies, where we assess 60% of jobs to be impacted.

Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, International. Interview with TIME published in its Davos 2026 collection, January 2026. TIME. Georgieva was asked what had changed since her 2024 assessment of AI's labour-market effects and said economies remain under-prepared.

My argument is that we currently have the wrong direction for AI. We're using it too much for automation and not enough for providing expertise and information to workers.

Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor of Economics at MIT and 2024 Nobel laureate in economics, United States. Interview published by MIT Technology Review, 25 February 2025. MIT Technology Review. Acemoglu argued that the direction of AI development, not its existence, determines whether workers gain from it.

Two points to conclude on productivity and AI. First, education and training in AI skills will be critical. Second, we shouldn't resort to oversimplified conclusions on the employment effects.

Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, United Kingdom. Remarks titled "The world today" at the IMF / Saudi Ministry of Finance conference, 8 February 2026. bankofengland.co.uk. Bailey set out four channels through which AI could affect employment and said the net effect was uncertain.

Business leaders and investors#

17 chief executives, chairs and investors, 18 quotations. All of them, by region, on what do business leaders say about ai.

There is a possibility that AI deployment will move faster than workforce adaptation to new job creation. In prior technological transformations, labor had time to adjust and retrain.

Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of JPMorganChase, United States. Annual letter to shareholders, JPMorganChase 2025 Annual Report, 6 April 2026. jpmorganchase.com. Dimon argued that AI will eliminate some jobs and create others, and that the speed of deployment may outrun retraining.

Everyone thinks the answer to every question these days is AI. It isn't. The answer to every question these days is all about the people.

Dame Emma Walmsley, Chief Executive Officer of GSK, United Kingdom. Columbia Business School Distinguished Speaker Series, in conversation with Dean Costis Maglaras, 18 October 2024. Columbia Business School. Walmsley described AI's value in drug discovery while arguing that the quality of a team still decides outcomes.

We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder.

Marc Andreessen, Co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, United States. His essay 'The Techno-Optimist Manifesto', published by Andreessen Horowitz, 16 October 2023. a16z.com. Andreessen was arguing against slowing or restricting AI development.

Commentators and analysts#

17 commentators, analysts and broadcasters, 17 quotations. All of them, by region, on what do commentators and analysts say about ai.

I think of AI as an acronym – not for artificial intelligence, but for alien intelligence. Not alien in the sense that it's coming from outer space, but in the sense that it's coming from our own laboratories. It's alien in the sense that it makes decisions and invents ideas in a fundamentally different way than human beings.

Yuval Noah Harari, Historian and author of Sapiens and Nexus, Israel. Interview in the IMF's Finance & Development magazine, 'Cafe Economics' series, conducted by Bruce Edwards, December 2024. International Monetary Fund, Finance & Development. Harari was explaining why he regards AI as different in kind from earlier technologies because it can make decisions and generate ideas on its own.

I believe that, similar to every other technological innovation in history, AI will inspire job destruction that will result in an increase in productivity, profits, reinvestment, and (wait for it) jobs.

Scott Galloway, Professor of marketing at NYU Stern, author and podcaster, United States. His No Mercy / No Malice column, 'Apocalypse No', 8 May 2026. No Mercy / No Malice (Medium). Galloway was disputing the claim that AI is causing a collapse in employment and arguing the pattern will follow earlier technological shifts.

…you are relinquishing a lot of the agency and decision-making capabilities that you had to a system where you don't know why the system is making those decisions.

Amy Webb, Futurist and chief executive of Future Today Strategy Group, United States. Her SXSW 2026 talk and accompanying interview with Fast Company, 14 March 2026. Fast Company. Webb was describing the trade-off people make when they hand routine decisions to AI agents.

Artists, actors, writers and musicians#

16 artists, actors, writers and musicians, 16 quotations. All of them, by region, on what do artists, actors, writers and musicians say about ai.

AI can write you excellent imitative verse that sounds Elizabethan; it cannot write you Shakespeare.

Ben Affleck, Actor and film director, United States. Onstage interview at CNBC's Delivering Alpha conference, November 2024. Fortune. Affleck argued that AI will cut costs in the less creative parts of film-making but cannot supply the taste and judgement that authorship requires.

Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don't feel. Data doesn't suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations…

Nick Cave, Singer-songwriter, Australia. His newsletter The Red Hand Files, Issue #218, answering a reader who sent him a ChatGPT song written 'in the style of Nick Cave', 16 January 2023. The Red Hand Files (theredhandfiles.com). Cave argued that songwriting depends on lived human struggle that a language model cannot have.

…I am profoundly disturbed to find that these days my identity is being stolen by others and greatly object to them using it to say what they wish.

David Attenborough, Broadcaster and natural historian, United Kingdom. Statement to the BBC after AI clones of his voice were used to narrate partisan news bulletins, November 2024. The Independent via AOL (reporting the BBC statement). Attenborough objected to synthetic versions of his voice being used to deliver news commentary he had not spoken.

Scientists and scholars#

15 scientists and scholars, 15 quotations. All of them, by region, on what do scientists say about ai.

There is also a longer term existential threat that will arise when we create digital beings that are more intelligent than ourselves. We have no idea whether we can stay in control.

Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel laureate in Physics; Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada. Nobel Prize banquet speech, Stockholm City Hall, 10 December 2024. nobelprize.org. Accepting the Nobel Prize in Physics, he set out near-term harms of AI and then a longer-term risk of losing control of systems more intelligent than people.

By taking over the routine, AI will empower us to focus on the things that are traditionally human: creativity, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and compassion.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web; Professor, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Bylined piece published by his publisher around the release of his memoir This Is For Everyone, 18 September 2025. panmacmillan.com. He argued that personal AI agents acting in a person's own interest could free people for distinctively human work.

AI is neither artificial nor intelligent. It is made from natural resources and it is people who are performing the tasks to make the systems appear autonomous.

Kate Crawford, Research Professor, USC Annenberg; Senior Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research; author of Atlas of AI, United States. Interview with the Guardian on the publication of Atlas of AI, 6 June 2021. Slashdot (reproducing The Guardian interview). She argued that AI systems depend on mined materials and on human labour that is hidden by the appearance of automation.

Trade unions and workers#

8 union leaders, institutions and workers' voices, 8 quotations. All of them, by region, on what do trade unions and workers say about ai.

The future of work will not be determined by technology alone, but by the policies, institutions and social dialogue that guide it.

Gilbert F. Houngbo, Director-General of the International Labour Organization, International. Opening address to the 114th International Labour Conference, Geneva, 2 June 2026. ilo.org. Opening the annual labour conference, he argued that the employment effects of AI depend on policy choices rather than on the technology itself.

Our work involves watching murder and beheadings, child abuse and rape, pornography and bestiality, often for more than 8 hours a day. Many of us do this work for less than $2 per hour.

Open letter from 97 Kenyan data labellers, content moderators and AI workers, Data labellers, content moderators and AI workers in Nairobi, Kenya. Open letter to President Joe Biden, published during President William Ruto's state visit to Washington, 22 May 2024. Foxglove. Workers who label data and moderate content for US technology companies described their conditions and asked the US government to act.

We're at the most important fork in the road our economy has faced in a hundred years. There is no worker and no industry this does not touch, and every job is now a technology job.

Liz Shuler, President of the AFL-CIO, United States. AFL-CIO statement on her inclusion in the TIME100 AI list, 27 August 2026. aflcio.org. She argued that AI reaches every occupation and that this makes the moment decisive for workers.

Where the world's leaders disagree#

On control they barely disagree at all. King Charles III asks for sufficient means of control, Pope Francis for proper human control, Giorgia Meloni for AI that remains human-controlled, Max Tegmark for meaningful human control, António Guterres for guardrails that preserve human oversight. The phrase changes with the speaker and the demand does not. What almost none of them says is which decisions, in which institution, a machine may take, or who can stop it.

On work they split down the middle. Jim Farley, Joseph Stiglitz, Tiff Macklem and Kristalina Georgieva expect net loss or a tsunami. Scott Galloway, Tyler Cowen, Mary Barra and Erik Brynjolfsson expect jobs to change rather than vanish. Andrew Bailey and Raghuram Rajan say the forecasts run ahead of the evidence. The split does not follow country, sector or politics; it follows how much weight each speaker gives to the last two centuries of technological change.

On creativity the artists are near-unanimous that a machine cannot make what they make, and two of them, Kazuo Ishiguro and Grimes, say it might make something new. On risk the scientists who built the field, Geoffrey Hinton and Stephen Hawking among them, speak of losing control, and Marc Andreessen calls any deceleration a cost in lives. On sovereignty the same word is used for opposite aims: winning the race in Washington, mobilising an industry in Mario Draghi's Europe, not being left behind in Paul Kagame's Africa, not being dominated in Lula da Silva's Brazil.

The decision that stays with you#

The register is a record of what the people others listen to have said. Read from this site, it shows one thing in high relief: the question the world's leaders keep asking, who controls the machine, has an answer at the level of a country and a sharper one at the level of an organisation. A government can legislate for oversight. An organisation still has to decide which decisions a machine may make in its name, who can stop each one, what its people must remain able to do without it, and how anyone would know if it went wrong. That is the argument of Rules Before Tools, and that is where the measurable risk sits: in the handover of decisions to machines and what happens to human judgement afterwards.

What this register does not show#

A quotation is a position on a day. Several of these people have said different things before and since, and each line was chosen for being verifiable at source and clear on the question, not for being the speaker's settled view. The register is weighted towards people who spoke in English or whose words were published in English, so North America and the United Kingdom are over-represented and Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East are thinner than they should be; the gaps are listed on each slice and are being filled. Nothing here measures what any of these people did after speaking, and none of the figures they cite has been checked here: a quotation that says 60 per cent is a claim by its speaker, not a finding of this site.