Anthropic co-founder backs Pope Leo XIV’s warning: ‘AI must be guided beyond big tech’

Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah has endorsed Pope Leo XIV’s warning regarding the concentration of decision-making power in few hands would be dangerous.

According to Olah, who attended Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical presentation on AI, the development of artificial intelligence cannot be left solely to tech companies, even the other groups and institutions such as governments, religious leaders and civil society must be involved.

Olah also welcomed the collaboration with the church on working on AI ethics.

"The questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community," while urging for “earnest, thoughtful critics who could challenge the dominance of few companies and ​help steer the creation ​of powerful new ⁠systems in a positive direction,” he said.

According to Anthropic’s co-founder, three critical areas demand immediate attention. 

The first involves the displacement of labour at the large scale. He even issued a warning that “there is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at a very large scale.”

"If that happens, supporting ​those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions," he said, sitting ​alongside the pope.

Secondly, the world needs to make sure that the benefits of technology and AI are shared extensively and equally across the world. He questioned that “if AI development is concentrated in a handful of wealthy nations, how can we ensure the equal distribution of AI gains.”

The third area revolves around navigating the complex and opaque system behaviour in terms of technology.

Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it. AI developers, therefore, "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility, for every design choice reflects a vision of humanity." Pope Leo wrote in Magnifica Humanitas.

Therefore, AI systems must be developed "through the possibility of openly discussing the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social justice."