Could AI be conscious? Why Anthropic is turning to the Vatican

Anthropic has been urging the Vatican to consider whether advanced AI systems could possibly develop consciousness. 

According to a new report from The New York Times, the company has been winning over religious scholars across the world in secret NDA-secured meetings to persuade others that AI could be conscious. 

 A cofounder and senior researcher for the Claude chatbot, Christopher Olah fiercely petitioned the Holy See upon learning of Pope Leo XIV’s official position on AI, though his attempts were unsuccessful.

The Pope wrote in a religious document, “So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean.”

Driven by a commitment to ethical standards, Vatican officials decided to invite a top AI company to speak alongside Leo before the Pope published Magnifica Humanitas and selected Anthropic for the role.

According to the New York Times, once the Anthropic delegation arrived at the Vatican, Olah and his team urged the pontiff’s council to seriously entertain the prospect of AI consciousness. However, Anthropic refused to discuss the details of the conversations when reached for further comment.

Olah teased that Anthropic researchers were delivering internal neural frameworks that mirror results from human neuroscience and offer evidence of introspection.

Earlier, Pope Leo XIV has requested an increased focus on the difference between human-made art and content created by artificial intelligence, underscoring the importance of recognizing human creativity and its unique role as AI becomes more common.

Nonetheless, Pope’s latest statement on AI likely caused Olah to blow a fuse; meanwhile the pontiff decried machine-generated art saying that computers are devoid of genuine feeling. Furthermore, the pope established a Vatican commission on AI to align the church’s policies and govern the technology, underscoring that we have to keep working as we cannot sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen.