The Vatican and one of the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence companies have collided over a deeply philosophical question that carries significant real-world consequences.
At the heart of the dispute is Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah, a senior researcher at the AI company, who attempted to influence Pope Leo XIV’s position on machine consciousness ahead of a major papal address.
Olah reportedly urged the Pope’s advisers to take the idea of AI consciousness seriously after reviewing the encyclical before its public release, according to the New York Times.
The 34-year-old, one of seven Anthropic co-founders, has maintained that AI models may be conscious, may experience suffering, and that humans should take care to avoid causing them potential harm.
Pope Leo’s 40,000-word encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas and published in May, firmly rejected any notion that artificial intelligence could be conscious or possess genuine human qualities.
The encyclical stated directly: “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.”
The papal document went further, adding: “Nor do they have a moral conscience,” drawing a definitive line between human experience and machine processing.
Olah was reportedly so troubled by the Pope’s uncompromising stance that he considered withdrawing Anthropic from the Vatican event entirely, even at a late stage, according to a Vatican organizer.
He ultimately attended and used his time on stage to push back, noting that researchers were finding “signs of introspection” in the models and “internal states that functionally mirror joy, contentment, fear, sadness, and discomfort.”
Since fall 2025, Anthropic has quietly brought dozens of religious thinkers to its facilities to discuss whether its Claude language model might be conscious, and Olah has asked guests to help shape the model’s moral character.
Critics argue that framing AI as a moral entity could conveniently shield companies like Anthropic from accountability and legal liability when their systems cause harm.
The Vatican’s position on AI extends beyond the consciousness debate, with Pope Leo warning about “new forms of slavery” for humans and calling for AI to be “disarmed” in the same way nuclear weapons must be controlled.
The clash between one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent AI laboratories and the Catholic Church reflects a broader and intensifying global debate about the ethical, spiritual, and political boundaries of artificial intelligence development.
