Almanac
← Events
5Simon Willison's Weblog·25d ago

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.

Related guides (3)

Related events (8)

6Anthropic News·26d ago·source ↗

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.

4Don'T Worry About The Vase·25d ago·source ↗

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.

5Anthropic News·1mo ago·source ↗

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.

6Anthropic News·17d ago·source ↗

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.

6Anthropic News·17d ago·source ↗

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.

4Import Ai·1mo ago·source ↗

Import AI 456: RSI and Economic Growth, AI Regulation Optionality, and Neural Computer

Import AI issue 456 covers three topics: recursive self-improvement (RSI) and its implications for economic growth, frameworks for 'radical optionality' in AI regulation, and a neural computer architecture. The newsletter synthesizes recent developments in AI capability trajectories and governance approaches. As a tier-2 commentary source, it provides synthesis and analysis rather than primary research.

4Ai Snake Oil·1mo ago·source ↗

Do AI Risks Require Extraordinary Government Intervention?

A commentary piece from the AI Snake Oil newsletter (published via normaltech.ai) examines whether AI risks justify extraordinary government intervention. The piece appears to argue against shortcuts in AI governance, emphasizing the importance of rigorous policy work. The article engages with ongoing debates about the appropriate scope and urgency of regulatory responses to AI.

3One Useful Thing·1mo ago·source ↗

Making AI Work: Leadership, Lab, and Crowd

This commentary from One Useful Thing proposes a framework for organizational AI adoption centered on three elements: leadership commitment, structured experimentation (lab), and distributed employee engagement (crowd). The piece offers practical guidance for companies navigating AI integration. As a tier-2 commentary source, it reflects practitioner thinking on enterprise AI deployment patterns rather than reporting new technical developments.