Anthropic lobbied Vatican to soften Pope's AI consciousness line

Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah reportedly lobbied the Vatican to soften Pope Leo XIV's stance on AI consciousness in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. Olah, after reviewing an advance copy, proposed withdrawing Anthropic from the May 25 Vatican rollout due to the text's rejection of machine consciousness. Despite private lobbying efforts by Olah's team, the final 40,000-word document maintained its original position on the matter.

This report uniquely details Anthropic's lobbying efforts to influence the Pope's first encyclical on AI, unlike other accounts focusing solely on the encyclical's content.