Catholics are preparing to hear Pope Leo XIV give ethical guidance on using Artificial Intelligence on Monday. Interest is especially high at the University of Notre Dame.
The pope will release his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, or Magnificent Humanity, alongside a leading AI executive. That might seem odd, in light of the Vatican’s cautious and critical statements about AI so far, but the executive will be Christopher Olah at Anthropic.
Anthropic has staked out a position as the ethical AI firm in the market, having told the Trump Administration that the U.S. military can’t use its products to kill people.
In March Olah invited a group of religious leaders and experts to Anthropic’s San Francisco headquarters to talk about ethical AI. Those guests included Meghan Sullivan, a Notre Dame ethics professor and director of the university’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good.
“The AI’s that they are building have serious ethical ramifications for the lives of everyday people and for the countries and governments that we live in," Sullivan says. "And the Vatican for centuries has been a place where people of all faiths can go and have these really serious, high-level moral discussions. And this year I think these companies are realizing, oh, this is urgent.”
Notre Dame in December announced receiving a $50.8 million Lilly Endowment grant, its largest ever from a private foundation, to help build an ethical framework for using AI.
In a statement at the time, university President Father Robert Dowd said, “Pope Leo XIV calls for us all to work to ensure that AI is ‘intelligent, relational and guided by love,’ reflecting the design of God the Creator.”
