Anthropic Co-Founder Tells Vatican AI Must Be Guided from Outside Big Tech

On May 25, 2026, Anthropic co‑founder Chris Olah stood in the Vatican’s Synod Hall as the only representative from a major AI company invited to the presentation of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. The encyclical — a formal papal teaching document addressed to the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics — focuses on “the protection of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence,” per.¹

It was an unusual convergence: a self‑described atheist and AI scientist, whose specialty is understanding why neural networks produce the outputs they do, appearing alongside the leader of the Catholic Church to discuss the moral implications of the technology he builds. “We need more of the world — religious communities, civil society, scholars, governments — to do what His Holiness has done here: to take this seriously, to look closely, and to push events in a better direction,” Olah said, according to Reuters.

Olah delivered a striking admission about the structural constraints facing AI companies. “Every frontier AI lab, including my own, operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing,” he said, as reported by OSV News. Geopolitical, commercial, and research pressures, he argued, shape decisions in ways that outside observers are uniquely positioned to critique.

He framed the Church and other external institutions as essential to closing the gap between AI companies’ stated values and their actual behavior. “If we want this technology to go well, it is enormously important that there be people outside those incentives — people who care about things going well, who are paying close attention, who are willing to say hard things, who are willing to be our earnest, thoughtful critics,” Olah said, as reported by OSV News.

Olah outlined three areas requiring immediate attention. First, large‑scale job displacement: “There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at a very large scale. If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions,” Olah said, Reuters reported. Second, the unequal global distribution of AI’s benefits: “AI development is concentrated in a handful of wealthy nations. How can we ensure the gains of AI are shared globally?” Olah asked the Vatican audience, per.¹ Third, the mysterious internal behavior of AI models: as someone who leads a team studying model internals, Olah admitted his team keeps “finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling — structures that mirror results from human neuroscience,” OSV News reported.

Olah’s appearance at the Vatican builds on Anthropic’s years‑long engagement with faith communities and its distinctive approach to AI safety. The company’s Claude models are governed by a “constitution” that defines values and behavior, influenced by Catholic virtue ethics with contributions from theologians at Santa Clara University and the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, National Catholic Reporter reported.

But Anthropic’s ethical stance has also come at a cost. In February 2026, the company refused to allow its technology for lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of U.S. citizens. In retaliation, the Trump administration canceled a $200 million Pentagon contract and barred federal agencies from working with the company. Fourteen Catholic theologians and ethicists filed an amicus brief supporting Anthropic, calling the company “acting as a responsible and moral corporate citizen,” National Catholic Reporter reported.

Pope Leo XIV directly accepted Olah’s invitation to collaborate: “I accept your invitation to walk together, to listen and to speak, and together to find a way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence,” the Pope said, OSV News reported. The encyclical itself warns that “the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means,” as quoted by.²

The document also addresses AI’s impact on young people specifically: “For young people, job insecurity is particularly devastating. When access to work is hindered, many young people find the path to their human and professional fulfillment blocked,” the encyclical states. These themes echo Olah’s own warnings about displacement, creating an unusual alignment between a tech founder and a pope.

Olah called the Vatican event “the start of a long collaboration between those of us who are building this and those who can see what we, from inside, cannot,” Reuters reported. The encyclical is not binding policy, but it carries significant moral weight — and it arrives at a moment when AI governance debates are intensifying in Washington, Brussels, and Beijing.

Anthropic’s valuation, NCR notes, has reached $900 billion, and its Claude models serve roughly 30 million monthly users. The company’s willingness to engage religious institutions is unique among major AI labs — and its willingness to sacrifice government contracts for ethical positions is essentially without modern precedent. Whether that strategy proves sustainable is one of the open questions Olah’s Vatican appearance leaves unresolved.