Sitting alongside Pope Leo XIV at the launch of Magnifica humanitas, the company’s interpretability lead conceded that frontier-lab incentives can pull researchers away from doing the right thing.
Christopher Olah, Anthropic’s co-founder and the head of its interpretability research, used his seat at the Vatican on Monday to make an argument that no leader of a major AI firm has previously made on a platform of that scale: the development of frontier AI cannot be left to frontier AI labs.
Olah spoke at the formal presentation of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, in the Vatican Synod Hall.
“Every frontier AI lab,” he said, “operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing.”
Even well-intentioned researchers, he added, remain inside those forces. The conclusion he drew was that outside scrutiny, from religious leaders, governments, and civil-society institutions, was essential.The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
