Inside the unlikely Vatican-Anthropic relationship that's reshaping the AI ethics debate

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(RNS) — When news broke last week that Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical focused on artificial intelligence would be releasing on Monday (May 25), a wave of debate swept through Catholic and tech circles alike.

According to Brian Green, it wasn’t the encyclical itself, which has been rumored for months, that sparked a "scattering of unease," but details about how it will be unveiled: at an event, planned to feature not only the pontiff, but also Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, a leading American AI company.

But as critics questioned whether Olah’s presence at the event was appropriate, Green, who works at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California’s Bay Area, was largely unmoved.

"It’s a little surprising, but I don’t think it’s unexpected," he told Religion News Service this week. "The Vatican has been cultivating relationships with the tech community for about 10 years."

Green would know. As a leading tech ethics expert operating at a Catholic university in Silicon Valley, he has spent years urging tech companies to embrace more ethical processes and standards. And recently, that has included Anthropic: Green is one of several religious leaders, theologians and ethicists who have participated in a series of sometimes dayslong conversations with the company since January, including sessions with the programmers crafting the AI models themselves.

"What we’re seeing right now is unique, it’s different, and it’s a seriousness that I think is something to be happy about," he said.

Chris Olah during a podcast appearance in 2024. (Video screen grab)

It’s part of a peculiar pivot to ethics — including faith-informed ethics — taking place in the tech world amid rising anxiety over the AI boom and its potential to radically disrupt the daily lives of billions. The power and wealth of leading AI companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI has grown to geopolitical proportions, with governments the world over rushing to position themselves as global AI powers. Meanwhile, high-profile debates over AI regulation are taking place among lawmakers who see a rare bi-partisan unease over AI, from the development of data centers to widespread job loss to the use of the technologies in war.

Yet insiders such as Green, whose university is also slated to have a representative speak at the encyclical unveiling Monday, say Anthropic’s presence at the event points to another major dynamic at play: an emerging relationship between the Vatican and tech companies that has spanned two papacies, as church leaders dialogue with major companies — and particularly Anthropic — about ways to produce more ethical forms of AI.

A Vatican mission to Silicon Valley

Ties between the Vatican and AI companies can be traced back to roughly 2016. According to a 2022 interview Green conducted with Bishop Paul Tighe, who serves as secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture, it was around a decade ago when the first series of conversations were held in Rome between church officials and tech leaders. Known as the "Minerva Dialogues," the conversations included several powerful Silicon Valley figures, such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, while other tech executives, such as Sam Altman of OpenAI and Demis Hassabis, who directs Google’s DeepMind AI project, held private audiences with Francis.

Around the same time, Tighe said in the interview, then-Pope Francis "was approached by a number of ethically minded business leaders from Europe who were very alert to the emerging issues around AI." Francis had asked Tighe to "follow up on these initiatives," resulting in the creation of the Vatican’s "Center on Digital Culture" within the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Brian Green. (Courtesy photo)

Tighe, meanwhile, became something of a tech ambassador for the Vatican, attending and speaking at events such as the Web Summit and South by Southwest. He also visited Santa Clara, a Jesuit school, which Green told RNS appeared to be part of a broader effort.

"Pope Francis did tell Bishop Tighe to go out to the United States," Green said. "What I’ve heard is that, at some point, Pope Francis said, ‘Get the American Jesuit universities doing something about this.’"

RELATED: Silicon Valley turns to Rome as Pope Leo XIV prepares AI encyclical

Catholicism’s engagement with AI became more explicit after the founding of Anthropic in 2021, which was created by several former OpenAI employees — including Olah — after they grew concerned OpenAI "wasn’t taking safety seriously enough," according to The Verge. Anthropic has since promoted ideas such as training AI to abide by "constitutions."

Anthropic declined to comment for this story, but the company’s interest in ethics eventually resulted in an email sent last October to Charles Camosy, a professor of moral theology...