Key Takeaways
- Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical warns that AI threatens human work, fuels warfare, and harms the environment.
- Anthropic co‑founder Chris Olah was invited to the Vatican ceremony, highlighting a rare dialogue between the Church and a leading AI safety‑focused startup.
- Critics label the engagement “Vatican‑washing,” arguing it may be a superficial feel‑good gesture that does not address the core harms AI creates for workers and communities.
- Despite tensions, the Pope and Anthropic share concerns about autonomous weapons and call for stringent ethical limits on AI in warfare.
- Environmental sustainability remains a point of friction: the encyclical urges greener data centers, while Anthropic plans massive infrastructure expansion, including a $50 bn investment in AI‑powered data centers.
Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical sounds the alarm on AI
In the first major written teaching of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV turned his attention to artificial intelligence, spelling out what he sees as the technology’s most pressing dangers to humanity. “AI can replace workers, accelerate war, and exploit the environment,” the pontiff warned, framing these risks as moral challenges that threaten the dignity of human labour and the stewardship of the planet. The encyclical, running roughly 42,000 words, calls for a renewed commitment to protecting workers from displacement and urges the global community to confront the ways AI lowers the threshold for the use of force and intensifies ecological strain.
Chris Olah shares the Vatican stage
At the ceremony marking the encyclical’s release, Pope Leo XIV was flanked by an unexpected guest: Chris Olah, co‑founder of Anthropic, the AI safety‑oriented startup valued at billions. Olah’s presence underscored the Vatican’s willingness to engage directly with the architects of the very technology the Pope critiques. In his remarks, Olah acknowledged the tension inherent in the AI industry: “every frontier AI lab operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing… No matter how sincerely any of us intend to do the right thing – and I believe many of us do – we will always be influenced by those incentives.” His candid admission highlighted the structural pressures that can push even well‑meaning researchers toward outcomes that may clash with ethical ideals.
Labor displacement sits at the heart of the Pope’s critique
The encyclical devotes considerable attention to the preservation of human work, arguing that AI‑driven automation threatens to erode the dignity of labour. Pete Furlong, senior manager of policy and research at the Center for Humane Technology, echoed this concern, stating, “All of these companies are building technology that … is designed to replace people. That’s very much at odds with the pope’s words. You can’t have dignity in a world where you’re building technology to replace people.” Anthropic’s own labor market analysis released in March identified coders, customer‑service representatives, and data‑entry workers as especially vulnerable to automation. A separate survey by nonprofit research group Epoch AI found that 20 % of full‑time U.S. workers said AI had already taken over parts of their jobs, while Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned of an impending “apocalyptic loss of white‑collar jobs.”
“Vatican‑washing” – critics question the depth of the dialogue
Some observers worry that the Vatican’s engagement with Anthropic may amount to little more than a public‑relations gesture. Paolo Carozza, a law professor at Notre Dame and co‑chair of the Meta Oversight Board, warned of a risk of “Vatican‑washing,” whereby the Church’s moral authority is lent to a corporate narrative without prompting genuine self‑examination. “This is Anthropic’s brand, right? That’s how they’re distinguishing themselves, by aligning themselves with the more safety and responsibility oriented voices,” Carozza said, noting that the startup gains credibility by being seen alongside the Pope while rivals like Google and OpenAI were absent from the stage. He added, however, that dialogue remains essential: “There has to be dialogue among all of the actors here, and it can’t be an us‑versus‑them thing.” Furlong, while skeptical, argued that taking Anthropic’s overtures at face value—while staying vigilant about future financial pressures—could be worthwhile.
Shared ground on AI and warfare
Despite the friction over labour and the environment, Pope Leo XIV and Anthropic find common cause on the perils of AI in warfare. The encyclical warns that AI “can lower the threshold for the use of force, shield people from responsibility and foster a culture in which the enemy is reduced to a statistic and the victim to ‘collateral damage.’” It calls for “the most rigorous ethical constraints” to protect the sanctity of life and prevent an arms race in autonomous weaponry. Anthropic’s stance mirrors this concern: earlier this year, CEO Dario Amodei refused to allow the U.S. government to use the company’s AI models in fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance, triggering a bitter feud with the Trump administration that led to Anthropic being blacklisted as a supply‑chain threat and ensuing litigation. By refusing to enable lethal autonomous systems, Anthropic has positioned itself as a pro‑AI safety actor, contrasting with competitors such as OpenAI, where Amodei once worked, and has invested heavily in lobbying—$1.6 million in Q1 2026—to promote regulation that curbs dangerous military applications of AI.
Environmental tension: sustainable data centers vs. massive expansion
Tucked within the encyclical is a quieter but significant plea for greener computing. Pope Leo XIV observed, “Current AI systems require enormous amounts of energy and water, significantly influencing carbon dioxide emissions, and place heavy demands on natural resources… It is essential to develop more sustainable technological solutions that reduce environmental impact and help protect our common home.” Data centers, the backbone of Anthropic’s AI models, have sparked backlash across the United States—home to the greatest number of such facilities worldwide—over worries about emissions, water consumption, and soaring energy bills for local communities. Despite this, Anthropic has pledged to invest $50 billion in AI infrastructure, including new data centers, while promising to offset electricity price increases for consumers and to deploy systems that curb power usage during peak demand. The scale of this expansion appears at odds with the Pope’s call for sustainability, raising the question of whether the company’s environmental mitigations will be sufficient to offset the ecological footprint of its growth.
Outlook: dialogue amid divergent incentives
The encounter at the Vatican illustrates both the promise and the peril of engaging AI developers in moral discourse. While the Pope’s encyclical offers a clear ethical framework—protecting labour, limiting warfare, and demanding ecological stewardship—Anthropic’s business model is built on scaling compute power and advancing model capabilities, objectives that can conflict with those very goals. Olah’s admission that incentives shape behaviour suggests that any meaningful alignment will require more than symbolic gestures; it will demand enforceable commitments, transparent accountability, and perhaps regulatory mechanisms that align profit motives with the common good. As Carozza noted, the path forward must avoid an “us‑versus‑them” mindset and instead foster inclusive dialogue that includes exploited data workers, communities affected by data‑center pollution, and other stakeholders directly impacted by AI’s rise. Whether this encounter seeds substantive change or remains a curated moment of “Vatican‑washing” will depend on whether both sides can move beyond rhetoric to concrete actions that honour the dignity of work, the sanctity of life, and the health of the planet.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/30/pope-leo-anthropic-ai