The Vatican has spoken - and more clearly than expected. Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical today, a document titled ‘Magnifica Humanitas’. The subject: artificial intelligence and what it’s doing to us.
What the Pope is asking for
Leo is urging governments worldwide to slow down and more strictly regulate AI development. His reasoning: AI spreads misinformation, prioritizes conflict, and risks leading the world down a path of unending war.
He’s particularly blunt about autonomous weapons. Some of these systems have already advanced ‘practically beyond any human reach to govern them,’ the first American pope warned at a Vatican event. Leo also breaks with a longstanding church tradition: his encyclical challenges the ‘just war’ theory more directly than any pope has since the fifth century.
Anthropic has a seat at the table
What makes this especially interesting for us: Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, attended the Vatican event. And he didn’t just offer polite thanks - he was remarkably candid.
Olah said that every frontier AI lab, including Anthropic, operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing. He thanked Leo for addressing the problems raised by the technology, and emphasized that companies like his need outside scrutiny.
That’s notable. A co-founder of one of the world’s largest AI companies publicly acknowledging at the Vatican that his own company might sometimes follow the wrong incentives. It fits Anthropic’s DNA - the company was founded by people who worry about exactly these questions.
Why this matters
You can feel however you want about the church. But when the pope writes an encyclical - a document that carries weight for 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide - it moves the needle. And Leo is hitting a nerve: the debate over autonomous weapons is no longer academic. The US is deploying AI in the Iran conflict, China is building autonomous drones, and the question of who ultimately pulls the trigger gets more urgent by the month.
The fact that an Anthropic co-founder was present at the launch and didn’t just accept the criticism but amplified it tells you something: the industry knows it has a problem. The question is whether it’s solving it fast enough.
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