Anthropic’s alliance with pope on AI harms: all in good faith or ‘Vatican-washing?’
Experts say AI firm’s engagement with Vatican risks creating ‘feelgood’ discourse that lacks critical examination
Why did Anthropic’s founder sit beside the pope during a warning about AI?
In the first major written teaching of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV took artificial intelligence to task.
The pontiff delineated the technology’s most concerning threats to humanity: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/26/traders-share-pope-leos-worries-on-ais-job-market-impact.html">replacing workers, https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/25/europe/pope-leo-ai-encyclical-magnifica-humanitas-intl">accelerating war and https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/29/gas-power-ai-climate">exploiting the environment.
At a ceremony honoring the holy teaching the day of its release at the Vatican, the pope was flanked by an unusual guest speaker: Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, one of the people behind the AI boom so worrying Leo.
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