SECTION 2: AI Industry and Government News
Pope Leo XIV presented his first encyclical on artificial intelligence at the Vatican, titled "Magnifica Humanitas." The encyclical reflects on the risk of building technologies that become too powerful to be understood, controlled, or governed. Notably, the Pope invited Christopher Olah, cofounder of Anthropic, to speak at the presentation — a move signaling an unprecedented alliance between the Catholic Church and Silicon Valley. This follows a long-term effort by the Vatican to transform itself from a moral observer of technology into a direct interlocutor with the AI industry, dating back to the 2020 Rome Call for AI Ethics. The Vatican sees Anthropic as a particularly important partner because, unlike other Silicon Valley companies, Anthropic has made AI safety a core part of its identity through its "Constitutional AI" approach. Olah, known for his work on model interpretability, is described as someone trying to "transform neural networks into algorithms understandable to human beings" — a description that aligns closely with the encyclical's themes.