Pope Leo XIV speaks with Christopher Olah, pictured right, who is the cofounder of Anthropic on May 25, 2026.
Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP via Getty Images
In a lengthy address about AI published on Monday, Pope Leo XIV sounded the alarm on everything from mass job losses to Big Tech's grip on AI.The pope's first encyclical, a major letter to the Church that lays out a pope's thinking on a moral or social challenge, is a 245-paragraph text titled "Magnifica humanitas: on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence."AI leaders lobbied the Vatican ahead of the letter's release, and Anthropic cofounder Chris Olah spoke at the Vatican City after the pope unveiled it.The pope also thanked Olah and vowed to work together with him."I accept your invitation to work together, to listen and to speak, and together, to find a way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence," the pope said.In his sprawling opus, Pope Leo warned about autonomous weapons, the environmental impact of AI, and the risk AI poses to human connection. At the same time, he made it clear he does not see artificial intelligence as "inherently evil."While many of the concerns the pope raised in Monday's letter echo points he has made before, as well as those raised by AI skeptics, the encyclical letter marks a major papal intervention in the ever-contentious AI debate.
