Anthropic lobbied Vatican to soften Pope Leo's AI encyclical

Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah read an advance copy of Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, saw its flat rejection of machine consciousness, and days before the May 25 Vatican rollout proposed that the company pull out, The New York Times reported.

Olah's team instead privately lobbied the pope's advisers to take seriously the possibility that Claude models might be conscious. The 40,000-word Magnifica Humanitas kept its position. Pope Leo wrote that AI systems "do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain." The encyclical adds: "Nor do they have a moral conscience."

Olah appeared on the dais anyway. At the Vatican lectern he said, "We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease." Speaking to the Times after the launch, he hedged: "we don't know if A.I. models are conscious. I don't know. I'm genuinely uncertain."

Behind the dais sits a longer campaign. Since fall 2025, Anthropic has flown dozens of religious scholars to its offices under non-disclosure agreements to discuss whether Claude might be conscious. The sessions continue; the NDAs stay in force.