chris-olah-d5419683·3 events·first seen Aliases: Chris Olah
Anthropic is committing $10 million CAD to Canadian research institutions including Amii, Mila, the Vector Institute, CHEO, CAMH, Université Laval, University of Toronto, and University of Saskatchewan, funding work in responsible AI, health, reinforcement learning, and low-resource languages. Partnerships include Claude API credits for research teams and, via the Anthropic for Startups program, at least $5,000 USD in credits to hundreds of Canadian startups affiliated with the three regional AI institutes. Anthropic also published a Canadian country brief from its Economic Index, showing Canada ranks eighth globally in Claude.ai use with per-capita adoption more than four times what population size would predict. The announcement combines philanthropic research investment with strategic ecosystem-building in a country with deep historical ties to foundational AI research.
Anthropic is opening its sixth European office in Milan, led by Thomas Remy (Head of Southern Europe), to serve Italian enterprise, research, and developer communities. The office already has active deployments with major Italian companies including Generali Group, Unipol Group, Enel Group, Pirelli, Angelini Pharma, and Bracco Group. Notable deployment cases include Satispay compressing an 18-month engineering roadmap into seven months and Bending Spoons co-authoring the majority of code changes with Claude Code. The opening coincides with Anthropic's engagement with the Vatican around Pope Leo XIV's AI-focused encyclical.
Pope Leo XIV released an encyclical titled 'Magnifica humanitas: On safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence' on May 25, 2026, and Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah was invited to speak at its presentation in Vatican City. Olah acknowledged that frontier AI labs operate under incentives that can conflict with doing the right thing, and called for external moral voices—including religious institutions—to serve as informed critics of AI development. He highlighted three areas requiring discernment: AI's impact on the global poor and labor displacement, the conditions for human flourishing in an AI-saturated world, and the uncertain nature of AI models themselves, noting that his interpretability research has found internal states that functionally mirror emotions. The remarks represent Anthropic's effort to broaden the AI governance conversation beyond the technical community.