Nobel laureates' Rome declaration sounds alarm on AI and nuclear risks

By Bharat Dogra 

The participants of the Global Nobel Laureates Assembly at the Vatican have adopted a very important declaration for the safety of humankind and, indeed, for all forms of life on earth. This declaration, titled "Humanity at the Threshold: A Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Weapons", deserves very wide attention. This carefully worded declaration is of great significance for achieving a safer future for humanity and, more particularly, for providing a safer future for children and the younger generation. The importance of this declaration increases further as it has been blessed by Pope Leo XIV, known for his deep commitment to peace and to a safer present and future for humanity.

This declaration starts by saying, "Humanity stands at a defining moment in its history. More than eighty years after the dawn of the nuclear age, and at the threshold of the age of artificial intelligence, we are presented with an unprecedented challenge. Never before has scientific progress offered such extraordinary opportunities while simultaneously creating such profound risks to our common future. When nuclear weapons were first being developed, the world had a chance to avoid living in a permanent dynamic of fear. We failed, and as a result, humanity has lived at the edge of nuclear annihilation."

Coming to more recent concerns, this declaration says, "With AI, a similar danger presents itself. AI built into nuclear systems leaves little time for, or even replaces, human judgement in a crisis. This technology changes the context in which nuclear-armed states compete with each other. AI will likely cause mass job loss and sharpen economic competition between nuclear-armed states. AI uplifts cyberattacks that can fracture critical civilian and strategic infrastructure. AI enables information warfare: peace depends on a shared reality. Without facts there can be no truth; without truth there can be no trust; and without trust, no dialogue, no verification, and no restraint among nations."

Taking up another important aspect of this danger, the statement says, "The most advanced AI capabilities, computing resources, and data infrastructures are becoming increasingly concentrated in a small number of countries and corporations, creating significant asymmetries of power and limited incentives for cooperation. AI is a technology that causes economic, military, and social disruption, and is developing at a pace unprecedented in human history. In the midst of a worsening nuclear arms race, we are embarking on an equally dangerous AI race."

Amid this serious crisis, and conscious of shared responsibility toward present and future generations, the participants have called for adopting the following principles:

1. Disarming the Next Arms Race

The Nobel laureates and their co-participants at the Assembly have stated: "We recognize that AI is an arena of strategic competition, like nuclear weapons before it. We call on governments, frontier AI developers, researchers, and the international community to act now, through governance arrangements such as benefit-sharing mechanisms, the promotion of AI applications that serve human wellbeing, and restraint in its most destabilizing applications, to reduce these risks while the choice remains ours. We must disarm the next arms race, both AI and nuclear, before they define the next century as well."

2. Responsible Development

The declaration continues: "AI developers should transparently publish the principles that guide the behaviour of their models and be held responsible and liable for those models' adherence to such principles. AI should be developed and monitored to be in alignment with humanity's interests, including international law and respect for human rights. Furthermore, no organisation should initiate, and no government should permit, fully automated recursive self-improvement in artificial intelligence systems without the means to monitor, and if needed, to halt such systems."

3. Responsible Use of AI

On the widely discussed issue of responsible use of AI, the declaration says, "An automated system should never make the final decision to launch a nuclear weapon. We call for the adoption of an international treaty prohibiting the reckless integration of artificial intelligence into nuclear command, control, and launch systems so that meaningful human control is maintained. We must prevent the malicious use of artificial intelligence in cyber operations and attacks against critical nuclear infrastructure. Nuclear states must engage in fail-safe reviews to reduce the vulnerability of their nuclear forces to unauthorized control or manipulation by AI. We promote the responsible development and use of artificial intelligence to improve human wellbeing, accelerate scientific and medical progress, protect the environment, strengthen resilience, and advance peace, sustainable development, and the common good."

4. Responsible Governance

The declaration's section on governance states: "We call on governments, corporations, and international organizations to enable a coordinated slowdown of frontier AI development by establishing shared mechanisms, such as verification and robust internal and external evaluations. We support the United Nations Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, and the promotion of other efforts in the spirit of Magnifica Humanitas. We call for expanded research and dialogue to propose new institutional pathways for international governance of AI, and the future implementation of global governance initiatives."

5. Responsible Leadership

On responsible leadership, the declaration says: "We recognize that the challenges we face will likely be solved by the next generation of leaders. Young people must be empowered to engage with nuclear, AI, and other potentially catastrophic threats, through education, mentorship, intergenerational partnership, and inclusive participation across all regions, cultures, and communities. We must advance education initiatives that foster ethical responsibility, critical thinking, media and AI literacy, and a culture of peace. We acknowledge that humanity faces numerous connected threats, the unintended consequences of which often impact those who do not have access to or control over such technologies. We call for a digital commons that grows data to advance understanding and action on nuclear weapons, ungoverned AI, and other existential threats."

6. Nuclear Disarmament

Finally, on the all-important issue of nuclear disarmament, the declaration says: "We call for urgent, sustained, and good-faith negotiations leading, within an agreed and time-bound framework, to the verifiable and irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons. The international community must reject the normalization of nuclear weapons as permanent instruments of security and strengthen the humanitarian and legal norms embodied in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. We call on nuclear-armed states to halt renewed arms racing and the expansion of their arsenals, resume bilateral and multilateral negotiations on arms control and disarmament, and fulfil their obligations and commitments under international law. States should pursue verifiable restraints and reductions; lower alert levels; extend decision time; move away from launch-on-warning and prompt-retaliatory postures; reduce the role of nuclear weapons in security doctrines; strengthen crisis communications; prevent cyber operations against nuclear command, control, and communications; and build cooperation to prevent misunderstanding, miscalculation, and unintended escalation. Nuclear nations must promote policies and doctrines that diminish the role of nuclear weapons and reduce the likelihood of first use and catastrophic war."

This carefully worded declaration is of very great importance and should be read, circulated, and endorsed very widely. Given the great importance of these issues, this declaration should not be a one-time effort; instead, a number of follow-up actions should be taken. In this context, this writer would like to suggest taking these issues further by declaring the next decade, 2027–37, as the Decade for Saving Earth and Its Life.

This writer has been campaigning for nearly a decade to advance this demand, since such a declaration at the world level by the United Nations would greatly help initiate dialogue and discussion at several levels on these issues, and help turn them into a grassroots campaign. There is also clearly a need for a strong, sustained peace (and disarmament) movement at the world level.

The challenge ahead is to ensure that such concerns do not remain confined to the level of top experts, but are instead carried forward through a broad-based, worldwide peace movement working in cooperation with the United Nations and other international peace organizations.

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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, Protecting Earth for Children, Earth without Borders, and A Day in 2071. His website is bharatdogra.in, and his YouTube channel, which has educational videos on these issues of peace and survival, is titled Bharat Dogra | Save Earth Campaign