More than 200 Nobel laureates, academics, and technology leaders gathered in Rome this week to call for a global slowdown in artificial intelligence development and renewed efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons, citing what they described as growing risks posed by both.

The declaration, reported by EWTN News, was signed Wednesday at Rome's Capitoline Hill after a Vatican-backed summit inspired by Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas.

"We must disarm the next arms race, both AI and nuclear, before they define the next century as well," the declaration stated.

The signatories pressed world governments and major technology companies to slow the development of advanced AI systems while reopening serious negotiations to reduce and ultimately dismantle the world's nuclear arsenals.

"We call on governments, corporations, and international organizations to enable coordinated slowdown of frontier AI development," the declaration stated. "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."

According to Vatican News, the declaration was signed in the Giulio Cesare Hall at the Palazzo Senatorio, concluding the Global Nobel Laureates Assembly on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War. The gathering was held at Borgo Laudato Si' in the Pontifical Gardens at Castel Gandolfo, where Pope Leo XIV is spending much of July.

Attendees included Cardinal Baldassare Reina, vicar general of the Diocese of Rome, Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri, and actress Sharon Stone.

Organizers said the gathering was inspired by Pope Leo's call for what he has described as an "unarmed and disarming peace," a theme outlined in Magnifica Humanitas.

Addressing the signing ceremony, Reina warned against allowing artificial intelligence or autonomous systems to make decisions affecting humanity's future.

"The declaration presented today reminds us with great clarity that no machine, no algorithm, and no autonomous system can be placed at the center of decisions upon which the survival of humanity depends," Reina said.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist David Gross also warned that geopolitical tensions are fueling a renewed global arms competition.

"We are in the middle of an accelerated arms race," Gross said, according to EWTN. "We ask that nuclear nations promote policies that reduce the risk of war, nuclear war, and annihilation."

The declaration reflects international debate over the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence as governments and private companies race to develop increasingly powerful AI systems while concerns persist about global nuclear stockpiles.