Pope Leo warns AI must be disarmed in first major teaching — Christopher Olah
Pope Leo used christopher olah’s Vatican appearance on Monday to put artificial intelligence at the center of his first major encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. The pontiff said the technology must be bound by the most rigorous ethical constraints as it spreads through work and war.
The document is the first major text on safeguarding humankind in Leo’s papacy, and it reaches beyond simple alarm. Leo wrote that disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of armed competition, and that it does not mean rejecting technology.
Vatican teaching on AI
Leo presented the encyclical at the Vatican on Monday. In it, he denounced the culture of power driving the rapid rise of artificial intelligence and said the technology should be human-friendly.
He also tied the discussion to slavery, apologising for the Catholic church’s long delay in condemning it and describing slavery as “a wound in Christian memory.” Leo said new forms of slavery can emerge through the digital economy, placing AI inside a wider warning about concentrated power.
Christopher Olah at the Vatican
Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, attended the event and said AI cannot be left solely to technology companies. He called for greater oversight from religious leaders, governments and civil society, and said there was “a real possibility” that AI could displace human labour at very large scale.
Olah added: “If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions.” He also said companies like his operate “inside a set of incentives and constraints,” a reminder that the people building these systems do not set the rules alone.
War, power and oversight
Leo warned that AI is helping to normalise war and said the development and use of AI in warfare must face “the most rigorous” ethical constraints. He wrote that some autonomous weapons systems are practically beyond any human reach to control, a line that places military use at the center of his argument rather than the edges of it.
He also wrote that power over digital systems, infrastructure and data does not rest with states alone but with major economic and technological actors. In that setting, Leo said, concentrated power in the hands of the few tends to become opaque and evade public oversight.
The practical question now is how institutions outside the technology sector respond to a pope who has turned AI into a moral and political issue at once. Leo said in May last year, soon after being elected, that he considered AI to be the biggest threat to humanity today, and Monday’s encyclical gives that warning a formal place in Catholic teaching.
