Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus said that the world now stands at the end of one civilisation and the beginning of another. He saidd that the civilisation we are leaving behind has failed in its fundamental responsibility, a press release said.

Professor Yunus made these remarks in his opening address at the Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War, held on 16 July at Borgo Laudato Si’ in Castel Gandolfo, Italy.

Professor Yunus said the civilization now ending had failed in its central task. “We have destroyed the planet,” he said, describing self-destructiveness as an ingredient built into the current age. 

He pointed to two forces driving that collapse, environmental destruction and an escalating concentration of wealth, and said neither had been addressed by the systems currently in place.

Turning to artificial intelligence, Professor Yunus challenged the idea that new technology would resolve these failures. He said artificial intelligence would not correct the concentration of wealth and would instead accelerate it, placing greater resources in fewer hands. On the widely discussed risk of job losses from artificial intelligence, he offered a different reading, arguing that the deeper problem is not the loss of jobs but a system that never trained human beings to be anything other than job seekers. Human beings, he said, are creators and innovators by nature, not people built to take orders.

Professor Yunus placed young people at the centre of his address, describing today’s generation as the smartest in human history because of its access to information and its willingness to question authority and existing systems of governance. He said the task ahead was not to tell young people what to do, but to ask them what world they want to build and what is missing from the one they have inherited. “Most of our own ideas are becoming irrelevant,” he told the Assembly. 

“We should create a future world that we can truly be proud of,” he said, inviting delegates and young participants to bring forward concrete ideas over the course of the Assembly.

The Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War brought together Nobel Laureates, former heads of state and government, religious leaders and young people from around the world for a gathering in Rome.

At the opening ceremony, remarks were also delivered by Cardinal Fabio Baggio, President of Borgo Laudato Si’; Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life; and Cardinal Silvano Maria Tomasi, President of the Global Nobel Laureates Assembly and President Emeritus of the Domus Communis Foundation.

Also in attendance were Professor Daniel Holz, Chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; Cardinal Peter Turkson, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences; Archbishop Renzo Pegoraro, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life; Hollywood actress Sharon Stone; and other distinguished guests.

During the Assembly, Nobel laureates from around the world, including Romano Prodi, Jody Williams, Maria Ressa, Denis Mukwege and Juan Manuel Santos, signed a joint declaration warning that the convergence of artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons poses an unprecedented threat to the future of humanity.

The Assembly concluded on 16 July with a public ceremony at Capitoline Hill in Rome. Nobel Laureates, former heads of state and government, and religious leaders gathered for the presentation and signing of the Rome Declaration on an Unarmed and Disarming Peace in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Weapons.