Amid growing concerns over the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah on Monday said AI development should not be left solely to technology companies and called for greater oversight from governments, religious leaders and civil society. He made the remarks at the Vatican during the presentation of Pope Leo’s first encyclical, which focused on the ethical and social challenges posed by AI.
Speaking alongside the Pope, Olah warned that AI could displace human labour on a massive scale. He said that if large-scale job losses become a reality, supporting affected workers would become “a moral imperative of historic proportions.”
The event marked a rare meeting point between the technology sector and the Catholic Church, which has increasingly positioned itself as a moral voice on the rapid growth of AI.
He also acknowledged that AI companies operate under strong commercial and geopolitical pressures, which can at times conflict with the broader interests of society. “Every frontier AI lab operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing,” he said, adding that external scrutiny is necessary even for well-intentioned researchers.
During the Vatican event, Olah highlighted three urgent areas needing attention: the risk of widespread job losses, ensuring AI benefits are shared globally, and addressing concerns around increasingly complex AI systems whose behaviour can be difficult to interpret.
Olah also noted that AI development remains concentrated in a handful of wealthy nations and raised questions over how its benefits can be distributed more equally worldwide.
Anthropic, a US-based company behind the Claude AI tools, was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, including Olah. The founders had earlier raised concerns about the pace of AI development and the need for stronger safety checks.
With inputs from Reuters.