Pope Leo XIV is set to release his inaugural encyclical on May 25, a pivotal document addressing the critical issue of human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence.
The Vatican announced Monday that the pontiff will launch this significant text alongside Christopher Olah, co-founder of the AI company Anthropic.
The presence of Anthropic's Olah at the Vatican is particularly noteworthy, signaling that the U.S. pope's stance on AI could emerge as a new point of contention with the Trump administration. In February, the Trump administration directed all U.S. agencies to cease using Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology. This directive, accompanied by other substantial penalties, followed Anthropic’s refusal to grant the U.S. military unrestricted access to its AI technology.
Anthropic is currently engaged in legal action against the administration, alleging illegal retaliation for its efforts to impose limits on how its AI technology can be deployed.
Leo, who has made AI a priority of his young pontificate, is greatly concerned about AI in warfare and has called for monitoring its use.
The pope’s presence at the launch of the document, Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity) is also significant, since such presentations are usually conducted in the Vatican press room with a few selected officials and invited guests who answer reporters questions about the document.
This time, the Vatican is bringing out an all-star cast for a formal launch in the main Vatican auditorium: Two of its top cardinals, doctrine chief Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández and development chief Cardinal Michael Czerny, will be the main presenters. Olah will be among the lay speakers, along with theologians Anna Rowlands and Leocadie Lushombo.
The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, will offer a conclusion and Leo will make a speech and provide a final blessing, the Vatican said.
Leo signed the document May 15, 135 years to the day after his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, signed his most important encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” or Of New Things. That document addressed workers’ rights, the limits of capitalism, and the obligations that states and employers owed workers as the Industrial Revolution was underway.
It became the foundation of modern Catholic social thought, and the current pope has already cited it in relation to the AI revolution, which he believes poses the same existential questions that the Industrial Revolution posed over a century ago. The new encyclical is expected to place the AI question in the context of the church’s social teaching, which also covers issues such as labor, justice and peace.
Anthropic chief Dario Amodei had worked at OpenAI before he and a group quit to form Anthropic in 2021. They disagreed with OpenAI chief Sam Altman about AI safety. The newer company promised a clearer focus on the safety of the better-than-human technology called artificial general intelligence that both San Francisco firms aim to build.
Earlier this year, privately held Anthropic said its valuation grew to $380 billion, positioning itself with its chatbot Claude alongside rivals OpenAI and Elon Musk’s rocket maker SpaceX, which recently merged with his AI startup xAI, maker of the chatbot Grok.
