Anthropic has been engaging in private meetings with religious scholars globally to discuss the potential for AI models to possess consciousness and feelings. Christopher Olah, co-founder and researcher at Anthropic, led these efforts and specifically sought to influence the Vatican's official stance on artificial intelligence.
The Vatican invited Anthropic to participate in an event alongside Pope Leo XIV, choosing the company due to its focus on ethics. Although CEO Dario Amodei declined the invitation, Olah attended. Before the event, Olah reviewed the Pope's upcoming encyclical, 'Magnifica Humanitas,' which explicitly rejects the idea that AI can experience consciousness, pain, or love.
Despite the Pope's position, Olah and his team lobbied Vatican advisors to reconsider the possibility of machine sentience. During his speech at the event, Olah suggested that AI structures reflect findings from human neuroscience and contain evidence of introspection. The Vatican has not publicly shifted its stance following these discussions.
Pope Leo XIV continues to maintain a critical view of AI capabilities. In a recent statement, he criticized machine-generated art, arguing that algorithms lack a human spark and perform statistical calculations rather than creating art. He emphasized that there is an ontological difference between human creativity and machine output.
