{"id":639,"date":"2026-05-25T20:09:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T20:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=639"},"modified":"2026-05-25T20:09:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T20:09:06","slug":"why-the-internet-is-joking-that-anthropic-hired-pope-leo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=639","title":{"rendered":"Why the internet is joking that Anthropic hired Pope Leo"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

No, Pope Leo XIV \u2014 the 267th Bishop of Rome, who leads over 1.4 billion Catholics \u2014 isn’t joining Anthropic.<\/p>\n

After the Vatican invited Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah to help unveil the Pope’s big letter warning about AI\u2014 and he publicly thanked Olah \u2014 the internet started joking that one of Silicon Valley’s hottest AI startups had recruited the head of the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

Read more What smart people are saying about Pope Leo\u2019s letter on AI<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
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Breaking: Pope Leo just announced he\u2019s leaving papacy and will join Anthropic as a member of technical staff. https:\/\/t.co\/4BLW1X1S7P<\/p>\n

\u2014 Mike Sapiton \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6 (@sapitonmix) May 25, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

During his speech, the Pope thanked Olah \u2014 who was sitting a few seats down \u2014 for coming, and pledged to work together to “find a way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence.”<\/p>\n

The San Francisco AI startup does have an in-house philosopher tasked with teaching its chatbot to be moral. Anthropic has also gained a reputation for hiring high-profile people, recently bringing on AI star Andrej Karpathy and the chief technical officers of Stripe and Workday.<\/p>\n

\n
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https:\/\/t.co\/X0fVKBUBPB pic.twitter.com\/FmCx6Ku6Ll<\/p>\n

\u2014 Cheng Lou (@_chenglou) May 25, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n

However, the memes are just jokes. (Business Insider did reach out to Anthropic just to make sure, but it didn’t immediately respond.)<\/p>\n

Tech companies, including Amazon, Google, and Meta, are all\u00a0lobbying the Vatican\u00a0to work more closely on AI. Anthropic’s longtime focus on AI safety brings it closest to the Vatican’s view that AI needs to be “disarmed.”<\/p>\n

Read more Read 47 pitch decks that creator-economy startups used to raise millions of dollars<\/a><\/p>\n

An ominous warning<\/h2>\n

In his speech, Olah, the co-founder of Anthropic, said there were three areas where the Vatican’s voice was needed.<\/p>\n

One is supporting the poor if AI displaces human labor on a very large scale. Second is making sure that humans who use AI can “flourish” \u2014 like making sure chatbots don’t ruin kids’ minds.<\/p>\n

Olah’s third point was the most mysterious. He said humanity needs to closely examine what is happening inside AI models, and hinted that they may be showing signs of consciousness.<\/p>\n

“We keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection,” Olah said.<\/p>\n

Read more AI, longevity, and the World Cup: Inside JPMorgan\u2019s summer reading list<\/a><\/p>\n

“I don’t know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment.”<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Vatican appearance by Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah prompted jokes that Pope Leo had joined the AI startup. Here’s what happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy the internet is joking that Anthropic hired Pope Leo - American home journals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanhomejournals.com\/?p=639\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why the internet is joking that Anthropic hired Pope Leo - American home journals\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Vatican appearance by Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah prompted jokes that Pope Leo had joined the AI startup. 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