Earlier, I posted a positive article about Pope Leo’s encyclical. I agreed with him that AI could pose a threat to human civilization itself. That was before I discovered that an Anthropic cofounder was at Pope Leo’s presentation of the encyclical.
Pope Leo XIV launched his AI encyclical with Anthropic. Anthropic is notorious. Its CEO and cofounder Dario Amodei and cofounder Christopher Olah want to mandate that everyone follow their AI constitution. It would probably usurp the U.S. Constitution.
President Trump unceremoniously canceled Anthropic AI in all agencies. It was a good call. Anthropic refused to allow the Pentagon to use all the resources in the Iran war. Anthropic demanded the power of elected officials. The company founders wanted to usurp even the President of the United States.
Anthropic said it would not allow AI to be used in limited cases concerning mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Those cannot be the jobs of CEO Amodel, Cofounder Olah, or any unelected technocrat.
The Pope Enters
When Pope LEO XIV presented his first encyclical on artificial intelligence at the Vatican on Monday, he invited Christopher Olah, cofounder of Anthropic, to speak.
The Pope is aligned not only with Silicon Valley but also with the furthest left of them.
Anthropic has built its public image around the concept of AI safety. The company aims to build not just powerful models but also models that are controllable and guided by its ethical principles. They have their own constitution, and they plan to decide what is ethical. Apparently, the Pope thinks this is a good way to go. He would actually make AI more dangerous, anointing their rules and mandates as moral.
Olah’s presence was a deliberate, long-term effort in which the Vatican has progressively sought to transform itself from a moral observer of technology into a direct interlocutor with the AI industry.
Anthropic has woven itself into every area of government, education, intelligence, and economics, and now the Vatican is aligned with it.
The pope is presenting Rome as the moral voice that must guide the machine age, and Big Tech is sitting at the table. The Pope has a far-left life view, and the Vatican is now filled with like souls.
This is one of the most dangerous alliances I could think of, and we should not trust Anthropic. We need neutral parties, not partisans, and they should be chosen by elected officials.