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Anthropic lobbied Pope Leo's aides to soften AI encyclical

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TL;DR

  • Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah proposed pulling out of Pope Leo XIV's May 25 encyclical rollout after reading an advance copy, the NYT reported.
  • Olah's team privately lobbied the pope's advisers on AI consciousness, but the final 40,000-word text still rejected the idea.
  • Since fall 2025, Anthropic has flown religious scholars to its offices under NDAs to discuss whether Claude might be conscious.

Days before Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical on May 25, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah proposed pulling the company out of the Vatican rollout after reading an advance copy, The New York Times reported. The 40,000-word document, Magnifica Humanitas, rejects the idea that machines can be conscious.

Olah's team then privately lobbied the pope's advisers to take the possibility of AI consciousness seriously. The final text held its line: machines "do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain," and have no moral conscience. Olah still appeared on the dais with Pope Leo when the encyclical was presented.

The lobbying was one piece of a longer campaign. Since fall 2025, Anthropic has flown religious scholars to its offices under NDAs to discuss whether Claude might be conscious, including Rabbi Mois Navon, Catholic bioethicist Charles Camosy, Notre Dame philosopher Meghan Sullivan, and Ubuntu researcher Wakanyi Hoffman.

The release date was itself a signal from Rome. May 25 marked the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII's landmark encyclical on the moral stakes of industrialization.

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Originally reported by The New York Times

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Original headline: NYT: Anthropic Nearly Walked Out on Pope Leo XIV’s AI Encyclical — Then Lobbied His Advisers