Anthropic co-founder urges AI oversight beyond Big Tech at Vatican encyclical launch

Anthropic’s Olah Joins Pope Leo at Vatican to Urge AI Oversight Beyond Big Tech

Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah stood alongside Pope Leo XIV in the Vatican’s Synod Hall on Monday to deliver what may be the most striking concession yet from a leader of a frontier AI company: that the technology his firm is building cannot safely be governed by the companies building it.

Olah spoke at the formal presentation of the pope’s first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” a sweeping document on safeguarding human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence.dailysabah

“Every frontier AI lab operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing,” Olah told the audience of cardinals, Vatican officials, and invited guests. He urged governments, religious leaders, and civil-society institutions to provide the external scrutiny he described as essential.thenextweb

A Warning on Labor

The second theme of Olah’s remarks concerned employment. He told the room there was “a real possibility” that AI would displace human work “at very large scale,” adding that “if that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions.”thenextweb

The statement marks the most direct public acknowledgment by a frontier-lab founder that the technology his company develops may eliminate jobs faster than labor markets can absorb the displaced.

The Encyclical’s Demands

Pope Leo’s encyclical called for the “disarming” of AI and for robust legal frameworks rather than abstract ethical invocations. “It is not enough to invoke ethics in the abstract; robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are required,” the pope wrote. He repeatedly criticized the concentration of power and data in a small number of private-sector hands, particularly regarding risks to children and vulnerable populations.dailysabah

The document was signed on May 15, the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” which addressed labor and capital during the first Industrial Revolution.thebostonpilot

Anthropic’s Vatican Relationship

Anthropic’s appearance at the encyclical’s launch caps weeks of visible engagement between the company and religious institutions. In late March, the firm hosted roughly 15 Christian leaders at its San Francisco headquarters for a two-day summit on the moral development of its chatbot Claude, as first reported by The Washington Post. The Vatican also announced on May 16 a new commission on artificial intelligence, the first time the Catholic Church has formally coordinated its AI engagement under a single body.fortune

Olah did not claim his company stood apart from the pressures he described. “Companies like ours,” he said, operate under “strong commercial, geopolitical and personal pressures that can be at odds with the broader interests of society.”thenextweb