Pope Leo's AI encyclical features Anthropic cofounder Chris Olah as speaker, signaling Vatican engagement with industry insiders on ethical constraints

Chris Olah, a cofounder of Anthropic, spoke at a ceremony following Pope Leo's AI encyclical titled Magnifica Humanitas, in which the pontiff called for 'disarming' the technology. Olah acknowledged that 'every frontier AI lab—including Anthropic—operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing.'

Catholic ethicists Brian Patrick Green and Brendan McGuire from Santa Clara University began meeting with Olah in fall 2024 to discuss ethical and moral issues of AI. McGuire provided a 28-page commentary on Anthropic's recent update to Claude's constitution (the behavioral parameters for the company's AI model), and both are credited in the constitution's acknowledgements.

Pope Leo's encyclical warns of a new form of slavery where the privileged few enjoy unimaginable bounty while the mass of humanity suffers under AI's unforgiving gaze. The document's stated purpose is to create dialog that may eventually temper the industry's reckless ambition and generate shame among those who build AI while knowing the outcome may be terrible.