Pope Leo XIV’s AI Encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” and Anthropic’s Role
The Pope issued a top-level document (an encyclical) addressed to Catholics regarding AI, titled «MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS»; an official representative of Anthropic was present at its announcement. This is connected to the fact that, in Claude, according to Dario’s strategy, “Catholic values” are being implemented as a model of morality and ethics. The implementation via RL training has already been done in the first version of Claude’s Constitution of behavior — and they plan to expand it further. I already wrote about this on the channel.
What matters here is the context that the Pope holds a PhD in mathematics and fully understands the basics of GPT. Already at his enthronement he took the name Leo in honor of Leo XIII and his “Rerum Novarum” from the time of the Industrial Revolution. Leo XIV deliberately dated “Magnifica Humanitas” to the 135th anniversary of “Rerum Novarum,” emphasizing the similarity of the situation.
Put more simply, the Pope is predicting mass poverty and the provocation of wars, which were consequences of the Industrial Revolution, when those who didn’t fit into it became paupers, as well as the fact that technology created weapons of previously unseen destructive power, which led to world wars.
In effect, the Pope and Anthropic have prepared a dogmatic memorandum at least for Catholics, which “people of good will” can join, in which the LLM vendor guarantees minimizing social consequences as much as it can, and also refuses to use AI technologies in weapons development.
However, it gives the impression that Dario’s word of God does not always match his deeds: in court he wants the Pentagon contract reinstated, but on his own terms. Although Dario’s principled position on AI safety in military affairs is well known.
https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/magnifica-humanitas-first-encyclical-lion-xiv-publication-25-may-AIT2I08C
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/it/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html