Anthropic has for months been wining and dining religious scholars globally in secret, NDA-secured meetings to convince them that its AI models can think and feel, according to reporting from the <em>New York Times</em>.
The lobbying reached the Vatican: Christopher Olah, a cofounder and senior researcher at Anthropic, aggressively lobbied Vatican officials after learning Pope Leo XIV’s position on AI, though his attempts were not successful. Following the Pope’s publication of his first papal treatise in May, titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” Olah’s mission became more urgent. The encyclical expressed strong views on the sanctity of human life in the age of AI and clearly stated that the Pope does not believe AI possesses consciousness.
In his encyclical, the Pope stated that “so-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean.” He asserted that while AI models might “imitate language” and “simulate empathy and understanding,” they fundamentally do not understand what they produce.
Before the Vatican event, Olah had accepted the invitation after CEO Dario Amodei declined to attend. When Olah received an advance copy of the encyclical, he reportedly threatened to pull out – seeing one of the world’s most visible faith leaders dismiss even the possibility of AI consciousness as a disaster in the making – but in the end he showed up. Olah and his team used their time at the Vatican to lobby the Pope’s advisers, urging them to take the potential for AI consciousness more seriously.
When it was his turn to speak, Olah discussed Anthropic’s research, highlighting that researchers are finding structures that mirror results from human neuroscience and purported evidence of introspection. His remarks seemed to clash with the Pope’s stance, which was evident in a recent statement where Leo XIV criticized machine-generated art, declaring that “algorithms lack the spark of humanity.” This reinforces the Pope’s position that there is a fundamental difference between human creativity and what machines produce through statistical calculations.
