Anthropic’s alliance with pope on AI harms: all in good faith or ‘Vatican-washing?’ | AI (artificial intelligence)

Why did Anthropic’s founder sit next to the pope during a warning about artificial intelligence?

Pope Leo XIV included artificial intelligence in the first major written teaching of his papacy. The Pope listed technology’s most worrying threats to humanity as follows: changing workers, accelerating war and we exploit the environment. At the ceremony commemorating the day the sacred teaching was published in the Vatican, the pope was accompanied by an unusual guest speaker: Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, one of the people behind the artificial intelligence boom that worries Leo.

Olah’s existence raises an important question: How can the Catholic church and the world’s most valuable AI startup work together when Anthropic’s technology could bring about the future Leo warns about?

Leo’s encyclical discusses at length protecting the dignity of people’s work under threat from artificial intelligence; But major AI companies, including Anthropic, aren’t prioritizing these concerns, says Pete Furlong, senior director of policy and research at the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for accountability in AI.

“All of these companies…are producing technologies designed to replace humans,” Furlong says. “This is very contradictory to the Pope’s words. You cannot have dignity in a world where you create technology to replace humans.”

Some occupations, such as coders, customer service representatives, and data entry workers especially vulnerable AI’s ability to automate tasks, according to Anthropic’s own labor market analysis published in March. A survey released last month by nonprofit artificial intelligence research center Epoch AI found that 20% of full-time workers in the U.S. say they use AI. They took over some of their business. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, warned of an apocalyptic loss of white-collar jobs in the coming years.

‘The Vatican is being washed’

Paolo Carozza, a law professor at Notre Dame law school and co-chair of the Meta Oversight Board, says Anthropic’s relationship with the Vatican risks remaining superficial and giving way to “feel-good” rhetoric without critical self-examination on both sides. “That’s Anthropic’s brand, right? That’s how they differentiate themselves by aligning with more safety- and responsibility-focused voices. There’s something to be gained by saying, ‘Look, even the pope wants to talk to us because.’ [our pro-safety brand]. Google wasn’t on stage and OpenAI wasn’t on stage,’” says Carozza.

Although initially skeptical about Olah’s presence at the ceremony, Carozza remains hopeful. “There needs to be dialogue between all actors here and this cannot be an us-versus-them issue,” he added.

Furlong of the Center for Humane Technology largely agrees. “What the Pope wrote contradicts what Antropik said. In my opinion, this is a good sign,” he says. Furlong believes Anthropic’s efforts should be taken at face value for now, and he thinks it’s important to engage with the pioneers of AI while remaining cautious about how much financial pressures are mounting. go public may change their future stance.

Olah noted in his speech that every leading AI lab “works within a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing.”

“No matter how sincerely any of us intends to do the right thing — and I believe most of us do — we will always be influenced by these incentives,” he said.

Some AI safety advocates think the pope is not strong enough to curb the harms of AI. Timnit Gebru, founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, wrote: linkedin post He said the alliance was effectively “washing the Vatican” and that the church should partner with “exploited data workers fighting for their rights, people with polluted water fighting data centers, or the many other victims around the world.”

Antropik did not comment on the issue.

Anthropic and Leo agree on concerns about AI and war

Church and Antropik agree on other issues, such as red lines regarding the use of AI in warfare. Leo wrote about how AI could “lower the threshold for the use of force, protect people from liability, and foster a culture in which the enemy is reduced to a statistic and the victim to ‘collateral damage.’” He called for the application of “the strictest ethical restrictions” to “protect the sanctity of life and avoid a race to develop such weapons.”

Amodei sparked a bitter fight with the president earlier this year when he refused to allow the US government to use his company’s AI models in fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. The Trump administration later blacklisted Anthropic and designated the AI ​​company as a supply chain threat; This led to ongoing litigation.

Anthropic has aligned its brand with: Being pro-AI security By acknowledging the risks of AI systems and encouraging measures for responsible AI use, unlike its rival OpenAI, where Amodei once worked. company one $1.6 million record on lobbying in the first quarter of 2026 – outpacing rival OpenAI. Most of their advocacy is in Washington and state legislatures encourages artificial intelligence regulation.

Leo calls for more sustainable data centers as Anthropic continues to build

hidden in a paragraph encyclopedic of approximately 42,000 words It is a gentle criticism of the data centers powering the AI ​​boom and a call to reduce their environmental impact. “Current AI systems require enormous amounts of energy and water, significantly impacting carbon dioxide emissions and placing heavy demands on natural resources,” Leo wrote. “That’s why it’s so important to develop more sustainable technological solutions that reduce environmental impact and help protect our common home.”

The data centers have sparked a nationwide outcry from communities concerned about negative impacts in the United States, which is home to the largest number of data centers in the world. industrial emissions skyrocketing energy bills. These power-hungry computer clusters are the core of Anthropic’s business; They need computing power to support increasingly powerful AI models. In response, many federal agencies and the world’s largest companies rely on Anthropic’s AI models for complex workflows and analytics; Whether the goal is to make a profit or to choose a company. military target.

Anthropic’s ambitions may clash with Leo’s calls for more sustainable growth. AI startup promises Invest $50 billion last year about AI infrastructure, including data centers. However, the company has committed to covering consumers’ electricity price increases resulting from these facilities and systems that reduce power usage during peak demand.