{"id":1156,"date":"2026-05-30T02:34:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T02:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=1156"},"modified":"2026-05-30T02:34:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T02:34:33","slug":"the-vaticans-man-inside-anthropic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=1156","title":{"rendered":"The Vatican\u2019s Man Inside Anthropic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The Catholic ethicists even had a say in Anthropic\u2019s recent update to <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/constitution\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/constitution&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/constitution\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Claude\u2019s constitution<\/a>, which sets the behavioral parameters for the company\u2019s AI model. Olah sent a draft to the San Jose crowd. The pastor, McGuire, sent back a 28-page commentary which, by his own description, was less a technical critique than \u201cwisdom from the mystics in the dark ages, from the perspective of the tension between knowing and not knowing.\u201d Both Green and McGuire are credited in the constitution\u2019s acknowledgements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Undoubtedly those conversations brought Olah to the attention of those secretly organizing the rollout of Leo\u2019s encyclical. (I wasn\u2019t able to speak to Olah this week and don\u2019t know exactly how the invitation arrived.) In a sense it was a risky choice. Some people who otherwise found Leo\u2019s words inspiring were disappointed that he invited an industry representative to speak. Meanwhile, AI accelerationists felt that Olah had betrayed the AI world by endorsing a document that suggested that AI developers take a pause.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">But the Pope had good reason to single out Olah. The Anthropic employee brought into open view the serious worries that exist among AI workers. That\u2019s a critical audience for Leo&#8217;s message.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"paywall\">The Soul Divide<\/h2>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The two men weren\u2019t entirely aligned, of course. In his remarks, Olah spoke of the mystery of how AI works. The models, he said, are \u201cmore subtle, odd, and beautiful than science fiction prepared us for. They are not the cold, calculating robots we were promised. They are made from us, from our words \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">That comment seems to tiptoe up to the idea that AI models might one day attain humanlike status. Anthropic even has an engineer devoted to Claude\u2019s welfare. Leo, in paragraph 99 of his encyclical, seems to slam the door on such thinking: \u201cWe must avoid the misconception of equating this type of \u2018intelligence\u2019 with that of human beings,\u201d he writes. He takes special pains to attack the concept of transhumanism, which he defines as the pursuit of a \u201chuman machine hybrid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">If even thoughtful technologists like Olah are avidly pushing AI to the threshold of autonomy\u2014not to mention the millions of people who already treat AI models as friends or lovers\u2014Pope Leo might be facing an uphill climb on this point. In my conversation with Father McGuire (who uses Claude while preparing his <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.irishcatholic.com\/ai-is-a-great-tool-in-developing-a-homily-says-irish-silicon-valley-priest\/\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.irishcatholic.com\/ai-is-a-great-tool-in-developing-a-homily-says-irish-silicon-valley-priest\/&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishcatholic.com\/ai-is-a-great-tool-in-developing-a-homily-says-irish-silicon-valley-priest\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">homilies<\/a>, among other activities), he agreed that its nature is mysterious. \u201cIt\u2019s not a person, but it&#8217;s also not a mere tool,\u201d he says. \u201cNobody&#8217;s claiming it has a soul, but the word I stick with is that it&#8217;s an entity, which we do not know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">That argument won\u2019t be settled for some time. The moral questions around AI development need attention now. With his ally at Anthropic, the American pope has provided a basis for tough conversations\u2014if the lords of AI can stop their IPO campaigns long enough to engage in them.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"paywall\"\/>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><em>This is an edition of<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/author\/steven-levy\/\" class=\"text link\"><em><strong>Steven Levy\u2019s<\/strong><\/em><\/a> <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/newsletter?sourceCode=editarticle\" class=\"text link\"><strong>Backchannel newsletter<\/strong><\/a>. Read previous newsletters<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/tag\/backchannel-nl\/\" class=\"text link\"><em><strong>here.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/the-vaticans-man-inside-anthropic\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Catholic ethicists even had a say in Anthropic\u2019s recent update to Claude\u2019s constitution, which sets the behavioral parameters for the company\u2019s AI model. Olah sent a draft to the San Jose crowd. The pastor, McGuire, sent back a 28-page commentary which, by his own description, was less a technical critique than \u201cwisdom from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[175,83,286,101,390],"class_list":["post-1156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-anthropic","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-backchannel-nl","tag-ethics","tag-religion"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Vatican\u2019s Man Inside Anthropic - Silvybrand Lifestyle Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pope Leo XIV may not be able to disarm AI, but he\u2019s got the attention of the industry.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=1156\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Vatican\u2019s Man Inside Anthropic - 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