Vatican City

Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah speaks at Vatican on Pope Leo XIV's AI encyclical 'Magnifica humanitas'

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.