Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah will join Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican for the launch of Magnifica Humanitas

Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah will join Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on May 25 for the launch of the pope’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, to figure out how to retain human dignity in the age of AI.

Normal Vatican document events are usually held in the Vatican press room, with a few officials taking questions from reporters.

But this one is going to the main Vatican auditorium. According to AP, Pope Leo XIV will attend, speak, and give the final blessing. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, will close the formal presentation, then Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, who leads doctrine, and Cardinal Michael Czerny, who leads development issues, will present the document.

Anthropic’s Olah will speak as a lay guest, with theologians Anna Rowlands and Leocadie Lushombo also listed for the event.

Vatican’s event is centered on AI, warfare, and human dignity

Anthropic sells itself as an AI company built around safety and risk control, and has famously been already fighting the Trump administration over refusing to have its technology used for war crimes and civilian surveillance.

Meanwhile, since he was chosen, Pope Leo XIV has been warning about AI in war and has called for stronger monitoring of how the technology is used. He is also very publicly disliked by Donald Trump, who has told the world, “I don’t like Pope Leo” at least four different times.

Leo signed Magnifica Humanitas on May 15, making it clear that the Vatican is treating AI like a full social crisis, perhaps even a tad bit apocalyptic.

The Vatican had already entered this debate before Leo became pope. In 2020, it gathered tech companies around the Rome Call for AI Ethics, a pledge built around inclusiveness, accountability, impartiality, and privacy. Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM), and Cisco (CSCO) were among the companies that signed on.

Pope Francis also pressed governments to regulate AI before his death. Francis called for an international treaty and warned that technology without compassion, mercy, morality, and forgiveness could not simply be left to developers.

Francis took the same message to the Group of Seven in 2024, where he addressed leaders on AI’s risks and possible uses. He said politicians must make sure AI remains centered on humans. He also said decisions about weapons, including less-lethal tools, must stay with people. Francis called for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons, often called “killer robots.”

Anthropic faces Washington pressure as its IPO approaches

Anthropic was established in 2021 when Dario Amodei and a team of scientists left OpenAI due to disagreements regarding the direction in which the company should move concerning AI safety. Prior to that, Dario Amodei used to work at OpenAI until the disagreement with Sam Altman arose.

Afterwards, Anthropic launched Claude and became one of the main competitors of OpenAI. They are working on artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is a type of AI that can perform better than humans at multiple tasks. This is what makes the regulators concerned because AGI is not limited to building better chatbots only. The possible influence of such AI systems in finance, military, science, and politics cannot be neglected.

This year, Anthropic, which is still a private company, reported its valuation increased to approximately $380 billion. This means that Claude belongs to the same category of competitors as OpenAI and Elon Musk’s company XAI (Grok). SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, merged with xAI. Therefore, SpaceX and xAI remain private companies and do not have publicly traded stock tickers.

Additionally, Anthropic raised concerns about the US-China AI race. Recently, they stated that the US and its allies should keep leading in AI technology development and create regulations regarding the spread of AI. They also warned against the use of advanced AI by authoritarian regimes for surveillance, repression, and control.

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