By Sanya Mansoor
Publication Date: 2026-05-30 13:00:00
Why was the Anthropic founder sitting next to the Pope during an AI alert?
In the first major written teaching of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV took artificial intelligence to task. The pope described technology’s most worrying threats to humanity: the replacement of labor, the acceleration of wars and the exploitation of the environment. At a ceremony honoring the sacred teaching on the day of its release at the Vatican, the pope was joined by an unlikely guest speaker: Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, one of the people behind the AI boom that worries Leo so much.
Olah’s presence raises a central question: How might the Catholic Church and the world’s most valuable AI startup work together if Anthropic’s technology could bring about the future that Leo warns about?
Leo’s encyclical goes into detail about upholding the dignity of human work as it is threatened by AI – but major AI companies, including Anthropic, are not prioritizing these concerns, says Pete Furlong, senior manager of…
