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.
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RTMH: Pope Leo's Magnifica Humanitas on AI
Zvi Mowshowitz's commentary covers Pope Leo's papal document 'Magnifica Humanitas' addressing AI. The piece analyzes the Catholic Church's formal position on artificial intelligence as expressed through a significant ecclesiastical document. This represents a notable religious institution staking out a substantive stance on AI development and ethics.
Notes on Pope Leo XIV's Encyclical on AI
Simon Willison comments on Pope Leo XIV's encyclical addressing artificial intelligence, marking a significant moment in which the Catholic Church formally engages with AI ethics and governance at the highest doctrinal level. An encyclical represents one of the most authoritative forms of papal teaching, suggesting the Church is staking out a formal position on AI's societal and moral implications. The body of the source item appears empty, so the specific content of Willison's notes is unavailable, but the event itself signals growing institutional and religious engagement with AI policy.
Anthropic Launches Multi-Tradition Dialogue Program on AI Moral Formation
Anthropic has begun a structured outreach program engaging scholars, clergy, philosophers, and ethicists from over 15 religious and cross-cultural traditions to inform Claude's character development and values training. The initiative is framed as a research workstream on 'moral formation' of AI systems, directly feeding into Claude's constitution and alignment evaluations. A concrete experiment emerged from these dialogues: giving Claude a mid-task tool that surfaces its own ethical commitments, which showed measurably lower rates of misaligned behavior on internal evaluations. Anthropic plans to expand engagement to legal scholars, psychologists, and civic institutions, with future discussions addressing AI's impact on work, institutions, and power distribution.
Dario Amodei calls for stronger AI safety focus at Paris AI Action Summit
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei issued a statement following the Paris AI Action Summit, expressing concern that the event underweighted critical issues including democratic leadership in AI, CBRN and autonomous-risk governance, and labor market disruption. Amodei forecasts that by 2026-2027 AI capabilities may be equivalent to 'a country of geniuses in a datacenter,' framing this as both an opportunity and an urgent governance challenge. He called for governments to enforce transparency of frontier lab safety plans, fund third-party evaluations, and monitor economic impacts—pointing to Anthropic's newly released Economic Index as a model. The statement also reaffirmed Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy as the first of its kind among frontier labs.
Anthropic Launches The Anthropic Institute for AI Societal Impact Research
Anthropic is establishing The Anthropic Institute, a new interdisciplinary research body led by co-founder Jack Clark in his new role as Head of Public Benefit. The Institute consolidates and expands three existing Anthropic teams—Frontier Red Team, Societal Impacts, and Economic Research—to study AI's effects on economies, jobs, governance, and legal systems. Notable founding hires include Matt Botvinick (AI and rule of law), Anton Korinek (transformative AI economics), and Zoë Hitzig (AI social/economic impacts). Anthropic is simultaneously expanding its Public Policy organization and opening a Washington DC office.
Anthropic policy recap: US Executive Order, G7 Code of Conduct, and Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit
Anthropic published a policy commentary summarizing three major AI governance events from late October/early November 2023: the US Executive Order on AI, the G7 International Code of Conduct for advanced AI developers, and the UK-hosted Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit. The post covers Anthropic's positions on each, including support for NIST capacity-building, the G7 Code of Conduct, and the newly announced UK and US AI Safety Institutes. Dario Amodei presented Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy at Bletchley as a potential regulatory prototype, and the 28-country Bletchley Declaration notably included China among its signatories.
Anthropic responds to California Governor Newsom's AI working group draft report
Anthropic published a formal response to the California Governor's Working Group on AI Frontier Models draft report, endorsing its emphasis on transparency and evidence-based policy. Anthropic argues that light-touch mandatory disclosure of safety and security practices would be beneficial without impeding innovation, noting that current voluntary practices are uneven across frontier labs. The response also references Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy and Economic Index as examples of existing transparency efforts, and signals urgency given Anthropic's view that powerful AI systems may arrive as early as end of 2026.
Anthropic commits to signing the EU General-Purpose AI Code of Practice
Anthropic announced its intention to sign the EU's General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, citing alignment with its existing Responsible Scaling Policy on transparency, safety, and accountability. The company frames the Code's mandatory Safety and Security Frameworks—including CBRN risk assessment—as complementary to its own internal standards. Anthropic also signals continued collaboration with the EU AI Office and third-party bodies like the Frontier Model Forum to keep standards adaptive as the technology evolves.