Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah presents alongside Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical on AI

Summary

Pope Leo XIV released “Magnifica humanitas” (“Magnificent Humanity”), a 42,300-word encyclical on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence — the first papal encyclical addressing AI. Chris Olah (Anthropic co-founder, 33, atheist) was invited to present alongside the Pope at the Vatican, marking the first time a pontiff personally presented an encyclical to the world. Signed May 15, the 135th anniversary of Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum” (1891 labor encyclical during the first Industrial Revolution) — deliberate historical framing positioning AI as a comparable epochal force.

Olah acknowledged that frontier AI labs operate under conflicting incentives (“commercial viability, geopolitical competition, and human ambition”) and called for external oversight from institutions not embedded in those incentives. He posed three questions for the Church: global equity (AI gains reaching developing nations), human flourishing (impacts on work, family, wellbeing), and moral discernment (understanding AI’s mysterious internal structures). The encyclical addresses “every person of goodwill,” not just Catholics.

Implications

This connects to Anthropic’s IPO-season values positioning (Gates Foundation, CDFI partnerships, Mythos disclosure, surveillance/weapons refusal) but goes further — it’s the first time an AI lab has been invited into theological discourse. The Vatican is a non-technical institution with 1.4 billion adherents being asked to contribute moral framework to AI governance. Olah’s framing of AI systems as “grown, not designed” and “mysterious even to those who train them” bridges interpretability research to philosophical/theological language. Whether this is genuine epistemic humility or narrative construction for the IPO window, the institutional signal is real: Anthropic is building relationships with governance bodies across government (Mythos/CISA), enterprise (KPMG/PwC), philanthropy (Gates), and now religion.