Magnifica Humanitas, Anthropic, and the Future of AI

Unable to escape the stream of media commentary surrounding Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical on safeguarding humanity in the age of artificial intelligence, entitled Magnifica Humanitas, I printed a copy to see what the excitement was about.

A papal encyclical is an authoritative letter written by the Pope to express the Catholic Church’s official position on important contemporary issues, often at moments of significant historical change. This one was written to synthesize the wide range of opportunities, harms and risks of the technological revolution in light of the Church’s social teaching.

Despite a Catholic upbringing, I had never read an encyclical before, and my expectations were low. I expected a somewhat dry religious document aimed primarily at devout Catholics. What I found instead was one of the most thoughtful, accessible, and inclusive discussions of technology and society that I have read in a long time.

Although the letter was clearly written from a religious foundation and was theologically dense in places, it was neither pious nor sanctimonious, and long stretches of the document read more like a contribution to public philosophy than a religious text. I ended up reading all 40,000 words carefully rather than skimming through it as I’d originally intended, and I came away feeling more refreshed, motivated, and hopeful than I would have thought possible from reading about the social doctrine of a church.

At the heart of the encyclical is the conviction that the God-given dignity of the human person must always take precedence over technological efficiency and profit. Importantly, this understanding of human dignity is expansive and encompasses such concepts as free will, equal worth, and meaningful labor, to name but a few. Magnifica Humanitas argues that our human dignity is under threat and issues a rallying call for people from all walks of life to come together to address the challenges posed by artificial intelligence and shape its future for the common good.

Much of the paper’s discussion of AI risks and social consequences was already familiar to me, given my work and interests. What struck me most was the extraordinary intellectual posture from which the encyclical is written.

It is written with a deep conviction, yet without any dogmatism, and with immense intellectual confidence, yet without arrogance. Throughout the document runs a genuine openness to other perspectives and a belief that wisdom is distributed across disciplines, cultures, faiths, and lived experience, and that no individual or institution—including the Church itself—possesses all the answers. The result is an unusually sophisticated synthesis of philosophical, ethical, technological, and social thinking, underpinned by a rare combination of intellectual rigor, humility, and integrity.

The Medium is the Message

The sincerity of Pope Leo’s address and the conviction of his words were reinforced by the way Magnifica Humanitas was presented, repeatedly breaking Vatican precedent and making the presentation itself embody the very argument the encyclical was making. 

Rather than handing the encyclical to a senior Vatican official to present, the Pope presented it himself: the first Pope ever to do so. And rather than speaking in Latin, he delivered both the presentation and his blessing in English. The audience was broadened beyond the traditional Vatican hierarchy to include external visitors. And Vatican officials and journalists were unusually given only a brief overview of the material before the presentation itself, which seemed designed to encourage genuine engagement with the document rather than rehearsed commentary.

Perhaps most striking of all was the panel assembled alongside him, which reflected a deliberate effort to bring different perspectives into the conversation. Alongside senior Vatican figures sat two female theologians and Chris Olah, cofounder of Anthropic and arguably one of the most influential thinkers in modern artificial intelligence: an atheist and someone who openly disagrees with aspects of the Church’s understanding of AI.

Babel or Jerusalem?

One of the central themes of Magnifica Humanitas is a call to action: a call to build a world where every person can flourish by collectively shaping the role of AI in society.

In a compelling metaphor used throughout the work, the Pope contrasts the biblical stories of the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls. Babel represents humanity’s attempt to secure power and stability through its own ingenuity—a single technological project driven by ambition and self-sufficiency that ultimately ends in division rather than unity and clearly represents the path we are thought to be on.

The rebuilding of Jerusalem represents the alternative. Following the people’s exile and the destruction of the city, its walls are rebuilt. Crucially, this is achieved not by a single leader imposing solutions from above but by many people contributing their own efforts towards a shared purpose. In the biblical account, families, artisans, priests, community leaders, and ordinary citizens each take responsibility for rebuilding their own section of the wall.

This is the message the Pope is giving: The future of AI cannot be designed by a small group of executives, engineers, data scientists, and policymakers. Nor can its development be shaped by only a handful of perspectives. To reap the immense benefits of artificial intelligence while avoiding its most significant harms requires cooperation across disciplines, communities, and institutions. Scientists and researchers, entrepreneurs and workers, educators and legislators, philosophers and technologists, faith communities and civil society all have their own section of the wall to build. 

Significance for Philosophy

Two things stood out to me in particular from reading the encyclical and the commentary surrounding it. 

Firstly, both Pope Leo XIV and Chris Olah have been quite explicit in calling for philosophy and the humanities to help guide the future of AI. Alongside calling out the need for a general multidisciplinary approach to addressing the challenges posed by AI, in his letter, the Pope insists that “the contributions of philosophy and the human and social sciences is essential.” And Olah has repeatedly argued that the questions raised by AI are larger than the AI research community itself, saying that “They are questions not only for computer scientists but for philosophers, theologians, artists and society as a whole.”

Importantly, this is more than just empty talk. As another cofounder of Anthropic, Jack Clark, recently said: “I think it’s a great time for philosophers,” and he went on to say that the company (Anthropic) had “just hired a whole bunch of them.”

Secondly, when reading through the encyclical it is clear that almost every concern raised in it ultimately rests on a philosophical question. Beneath debates about AI safety, governance, labor, bias, creativity, human weakness, power, and warfare lie more fundamental questions about human nature, dignity, justice, freedom, and the common good.

Magnifica Humanitas has received its fair share of criticism. Some critics argue that the Pope underestimates AI’s benefits relative to its risks, while others question the assertion that AI inhibits human creativity, and others still criticize the letter’s plea to protect certain aspects of human weakness rather than overcome them. None of the criticisms I have read are purely technical disagreements, though. They are all disagreements about values, personhood, flourishing, and the kind of society we want to build—questions that lie at the heart of philosophy. 

On the subject of criticism, what is so refreshing about this Pope is that his response is not to close down these debates, but rather to widen them. He repeatedly stresses that the Church “does not claim to possess a monopoly on truth” and that it “does not possess the technical answers.” Instead, he calls for these questions to be explored through genuine dialogue across disciplines and perspectives, drawing on centuries of accumulated philosophical thought alongside expertise from science, engineering, economics, law, and many other fields.

Hope from Unlikely Allies

While writing this piece, I found myself trying to work out exactly why this encyclical had affected me so much. Undoubtedly, part of it was that it gave such a clear and authoritative expression to ideas I already believed to be important: that philosophy has a critical role to play in our technological future, that AI must be shaped through genuinely multidisciplinary collaboration, that responsible planning is crucial, and that solving problems of this scale requires many different perspectives rather than a select few.

But that wasn’t the main reason. The more I read about how the encyclical was written, how it was presented, and the relationship that has developed between the Vatican and figures such as Chris Olah, the more I realized that this was not simply a document about cooperation; it was an attempt to embody it, to deliver on it.

There is something deeply reassuring about seeing people with profoundly different worldviews, beliefs, and expertise working together because they share a commitment to something larger than themselves: a pope and one of the world’s leading AI researchers, a religious institution openly acknowledging that it does not possess all the answers together with an AI company prepared to engage seriously with philosophy, theology and the humanities. Neither of them are pretending their differences do not exist, but they are treating those differences as something to learn from rather than something to divide them.

This kind of intellectual integrity feels increasingly rare—particularly in the current political climate. So, too, does the willingness to act consistently with one’s principles when doing so comes at a personal or professional cost. That is something both Pope Leo and leaders at Anthropic appear prepared to do, even when it places them at odds with powerful political or commercial interests. It is easy to talk about ethics; it is much harder to build institutions, partnerships, and technologies that genuinely embody them.

Throughout the encyclical, Pope Leo returns to the image of rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls. The point is straightforward—every one of us has a section of the wall to build. 

Reading Magnifica Humanitas left me with an unexpected sense of hope and optimism. The challenges of AI are all still there, but I came away encouraged by the knowledge that there are people of extraordinary intellect and genuine courage prepared to lead the kind of collaboration our technological future demands—to listen, to bring together different voices and perspectives, and to act according to their convictions in shaping technology for the common good, even when doing so carries risk. I hope the message of the encyclical and the example set by the Pope and leaders within the AI community inspire many others to do the same—and to recognize they, too, have a section of the wall to build.