The Pope and Anthropic’s co-founder just stood together at the Vatican.

They released the first official Catholic teaching on AI. A full encyclical called Magnifica Humanitas. Two hour ceremony. The biggest religious response to AI in history.

The Pope’s main line was simple and direct.

AI needs to be disarmed.

He compared it to nuclear weapons. Said the church spent decades pushing for nuclear disarmament because the technology was too dangerous in too few hands. He says AI is now in that same category.

The Pope chose the name Leo XIV deliberately. The last Pope named Leo was Leo XIII in 1891 who wrote the church’s response to the industrial revolution. Same name. Same signal. He sees AI as the new industrial revolution.

Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah told the Pope on stage that their own research team keeps finding things inside their AI models that mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease.

Then he said this. These models are made from us. From our words. Even the people building them do not fully understand what is happening inside.

He also admitted publicly that every AI lab including his own faces commercial and competitive pressure that can conflict with doing the right thing. His solution was that the labs need outside critics with no skin in the game who will call them out when they fail.

The Pope’s closing line was this. This technology should serve human flourishing and human dignity, not control consciences.

When the Vatican writes a formal letter about your industry and the person building the technology stands next to the Pope to release it, something has genuinely shifted.

Video source: disclosetv