At a moment when the architecture of artificial intelligence is being laid by a small number of corporations, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah stood beside Pope Leo XIV to affirm that such consequential decisions belong to all of humanity, not merely to those with the technical means to build. The Pope's first encyclical on AI, and Olah's endorsement of its warnings, represent a rare convergence of Silicon Valley and the Vatican around a shared moral intuition: that power concentrated without accountability becomes a burden the world must eventually bear together. Their shared position is less
Anthropic Co-Founder Backs Pope's Call for AI Governance Beyond Big Tech
Potential large-scale labor displacement from AI advancement could affect millions of workers globally, requiring historic-scale social support systems.
Technology is never neutral—it takes on the values of those who build it
Mark
Why does Olah think the Pope's voice matters here? Isn't this ultimately a technical problem that technologists should solve?
Mimi
Because the technical choices are never just technical. When you decide how an AI system should behave, you're encoding assumptions about what matters, who benefits, what fairness looks like. Those are moral questions, not engineering questions. The Pope brings a tradition of thinking about those things.
Mark
But doesn't involving more stakeholders just slow things down? Doesn't it create gridlock?
Mimi
Maybe. But the alternative is moving fast and breaking things—except the things being broken are people's livelihoods and entire economies. Olah is saying: if you're going to displace workers at historic scale, you need to have thought through what comes next. That requires more than engineers in a room.
Mark
He mentioned three concerns. Which one keeps him up at night?
Mimi
Probably the first one—labor displacement. That's not theoretical. It's happening now in some sectors. The question is whether it accelerates to the point where millions of people lose their ability to earn a living. If that happens without preparation, without social systems in place, it becomes a crisis.
Mark
The second concern was about unequal distribution globally. How do you even solve that?
Mimi
You don't solve it by accident. Right now, AI development is concentrated in wealthy countries with wealthy companies. If you want the benefits to spread, you have to make choices about how to share the technology, the training, the economic gains. That requires international cooperation and intention.
Mark
And the opacity issue—the fact that even creators don't fully understand their own systems?
Mimi
That's the deepest problem. You can't govern what you can't understand. You can't hold anyone accountable for decisions made by a black box. So the call is to make these systems more transparent, more explicable, so that the values embedded in them can be examined and debated.
Mark
So Olah is essentially saying: slow down, involve more people, make your values visible?
Mimi
Not slow down exactly. But be intentional. Be honest about what you're building and who it affects. Let people who think about justice and ethics have a voice in how it's designed. That's not the same as stopping progress.
Il Polso
- A handful of technology companies currently hold the power to shape AI's trajectory for billions of people who have no voice in those decisions.
- The threat of mass labor displacement looms large — not as distant speculation, but as a moral emergency requiring social support systems of historic scale.
- AI's benefits risk flowing almost exclusively to wealthy nations and corporations unless deliberate, structural choices redirect them toward global equity.
- The opacity of AI systems means that values and assumptions are being quietly embedded into technology without public scrutiny or ethical accountability.
- Pope Leo XIV's encyclical and Olah's endorsement are pushing for open, multi-stakeholder governance — governments, religious institutions, and civil society at the table alongside technologists.
- The emerging consensus is not a call to slow innovation, but to make the values driving it explicit, contestable, and answerable to human dignity rather than competitive advantage.
At a moment when the architecture of artificial intelligence is being laid by a small number of corporations, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah stood beside Pope Leo XIV to affirm that such consequential decisions belong to all of humanity, not merely to those with the technical means to build. The Pope's first encyclical on AI, and Olah's endorsement of its warnings, represent a rare convergence of Silicon Valley and the Vatican around a shared moral intuition: that power concentrated without accountability becomes a burden the world must eventually bear together. Their shared position is less a policy proposal than a philosophical reckoning — a reminder that the questions technology raises are, at their root, questions about what kind of human future we are willing to accept.
When Pope Leo XIV unveiled his first encyclical on artificial intelligence, Chris Olah — one of Anthropic's founders — was seated beside him. His subsequent endorsement of the Pope's warning marked something unusual: a genuine alignment between the technology sector and the Vatican on one of the defining questions of the coming decades.
The core concern is both simple and profound. When transformative technology is built and deployed by only a few corporations, those companies make decisions on behalf of everyone. Olah was direct: this concentration of power is not merely a regulatory problem — it is a moral one. Governments, religious institutions, and civil society must have a seat at the table. The questions AI raises are too consequential and too human to be answered by technologists working alone.
Olah identified three urgent pressure points. First, the possibility of mass labor displacement at a scale the world has not seen, carrying with it a moral obligation to support those whose livelihoods are erased. Second, the unequal distribution of AI's benefits — concentrated in wealthy nations and corporations unless deliberate choices redirect them. Third, the opacity of AI systems themselves, whose design choices quietly embed values and assumptions that are rarely made visible or held accountable.
The Pope's encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, addressed this last point directly: AI developers carry a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility because their work embodies a vision of what humanity should become. Olah welcomed the Church's involvement precisely because moral and religious traditions carry wisdom the technology sector alone does not possess.
What both men are calling for is not a slowdown of innovation, but a widening of the room where decisions are made — to include those who think about justice, equity, and human dignity alongside those who think about capability and efficiency. The future of AI, they argue, is too large a question to be answered by any single industry, however powerful.
Chris Olah, one of the founders of Anthropic, sat alongside Pope Leo XIV as the pontiff unveiled his first encyclical on artificial intelligence. The message was stark: the world cannot allow a handful of technology companies to shape the future of AI in isolation. Olah's presence at that moment—and his subsequent endorsement of the Pope's warning—marked a rare alignment between Silicon Valley and the Vatican on a question that will define the coming decades.
The concern at the heart of their shared position is straightforward but consequential. When the power to build and deploy transformative technology concentrates in the hands of a few corporations, the decisions those companies make become decisions for everyone. Olah made clear that this concentration of power is not merely a business problem or a regulatory one. It is a moral one. He argued that governments, religious institutions, and civil society organizations must have a seat at the table where AI's future is decided. The research community alone cannot bear that weight. Neither can industry. The questions being raised by artificial intelligence, he said, are too large, too consequential, and too human to be answered by technologists working in isolation.
Olah identified three areas where immediate attention is required, each touching on a different dimension of the challenge ahead. The first is the specter of mass labor displacement. He did not hedge the possibility: artificial intelligence could displace human workers at a scale the world has never seen. If that happens, he warned, society will face a moral obligation of historic proportions—the obligation to support and sustain those whose livelihoods have been erased by technological change. This is not speculation. It is a direct acknowledgment of what many economists and technologists have begun to fear.
The second concern is distribution. AI development is concentrated in a handful of wealthy nations. The benefits of that development—the economic gains, the productivity improvements, the access to powerful tools—will flow primarily to those same nations and the corporations within them unless deliberate choices are made otherwise. Olah posed the question plainly: if the world's AI capacity is built in a few places by a few companies, how can anyone ensure that the gains are shared equitably across the globe? Without intentional action, the answer is clear: they cannot.
The third area involves the opacity of AI systems themselves. These technologies do not behave in ways that are easily understood or predicted, even by their creators. That opacity matters because technology is never neutral. Every design choice, every training decision, every parameter reflects the values and assumptions of those who built the system. The Pope, in his encyclical titled Magnifica Humanitas, made this explicit: AI developers bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility because their work embodies a vision of what humanity should be.
This is where the Pope's voice becomes essential. Olah welcomed the collaboration with the church on questions of AI ethics precisely because religious and moral traditions carry wisdom that the technology sector alone does not possess. The Pope called for AI systems to be developed through open discussion of their ethical frameworks, with those frameworks subjected to shared standards of social justice. This is not a call to slow innovation or to burden technologists with bureaucracy. It is a call to make the values embedded in these systems explicit, debatable, and accountable to something larger than quarterly earnings or competitive advantage.
What emerges from Olah's remarks is a vision of AI governance that extends far beyond the conference rooms of tech companies or the offices of regulators. It requires earnest, thoughtful critics willing to challenge the dominance of the few corporations that currently shape the field. It requires the participation of people who think about justice, equity, and human dignity—not just efficiency and capability. The Pope and Anthropic's co-founder are not arguing that technology companies should step aside. They are arguing that they should not be alone in the room where the future is being decided.
Citazioni salienti
The questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community, and require earnest, thoughtful critics who can challenge the dominance of few companies and help steer powerful new systems in a positive direction— Chris Olah, Anthropic co-founder
AI developers bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility, because every design choice reflects a vision of humanity— Pope Leo XIV, from encyclical Magnifica Humanitas
Vuoi la storia completa?
Leggi l'originale su The News International ↗
Technology