Pope Leo XIV releases first encyclical on AI at the Vatican. Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah was on stage beside him.

[StringTheory97]

On Monday May 25, Pope Leo XIV personally presented Magnifica Humanitas, his first encyclical, at the Vatican Synod Hall. The document focuses on safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence. It is the first papal encyclical dedicated to AI and the Pope personally attended the presentation, an uncustomary gesture.

Sitting beside cardinals and theologians was Christopher Olah, 33-year-old co-founder of Anthropic and head of the company's interpretability research. An atheist, Olah was invited to speak because Anthropic has been one of the few AI companies willing to engage seriously with ethical constraints, including its public refusal to allow its models to be used for lethal autonomous weapons or mass surveillance, a stance that led the Pentagon to label Anthropic a supply chain risk earlier this year.

Olah warned the audience that AI will displace human labour at very large scale, that development is concentrated in a handful of wealthy nations, and that the incentive structures inside frontier AI labs can conflict with doing the right thing. He called on religious communities, civil society, and governments to be informed critics who will tell the labs when they are failing.

Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah's remarks on Pope Leo XIV's encyclical "Magnifica humanitas"

https://www.anthropic.com/news/chris-olah-pope-leo-encyclical

https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/pope-leo-anthropic-co-founder-call-church-tech-ethics-partnership-magnifica

https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/pope-leo-anthropic-co-founder-call-church-tech-ethics-partnership-magnifica

[Cheugy89]

An atheist AI researcher sitting beside cardinals at the Vatican to present a papal document on technology is not a sentence I expected to write in 2026. The visual alone tells you something about how seriously the Church is taking this

[StoneCold]

The Pentagon labelling Anthropic a supply chain risk for refusing autonomous weapons contracts is the context that makes Olah's presence at the Vatican coherent. He has made principled decisions that had real commercial costs

[Luca73]

The warning that AI development is concentrated in a handful of wealthy nations and that the gains need to be shared globally is the most politically significant thing in the coverage. That is a critique of the current structure of the industry from inside the industry

[Anchor99]

Rerum novarum was Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical on labour rights in the industrial revolution. Leo XIV signing this document on the 135th anniversary of that is deliberate. The Church is drawing an explicit historical parallel between the industrial revolution and AI

[GhostRider]

The incentive structures inside frontier AI labs conflicting with doing the right thing is the most honest statement any AI company founder has made publicly in years. Olah saying it at the Vatican with the press watching is remarkable

[CMPunk88]

Whether this document produces any practical change in how AI is developed is the test. Moral voices without enforcement mechanisms have a limited track record

[StringTheory51]

The fact that Anthropic was chosen over OpenAI, Google, or Meta for this moment says something about how the Church assessed which companies have actually demonstrated ethical commitment versus those that perform it