Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah warns on AI at the Vatican

Chris Olah, who leads research at Anthropic, said in the Vatican that AI-driven job displacement is a real threat. The remarks came at the presentation of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical on technology.

Olah acknowledged that AI labs are driven by commercial and geopolitical interests that often clash with ethics. He called for outside oversight from society and religious leaders, noting that AI decisions should not remain solely in the hands of industry.

In his talk, Olah also touched on interpretability research. He said AI systems exhibit internal states that functionally resemble human emotions like fear or joy. This makes the technology a matter that goes far beyond computer science.