{"id":8814,"date":"2026-05-28T14:52:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8814"},"modified":"2026-05-28T14:52:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:52:56","slug":"anthropic-co-founder-remarks-on-magnifica-humanitas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8814","title":{"rendered":"Anthropic co-founder remarks on &#8220;Magnifica humanitas&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah was one of the respondents on Pope Leo XIV&#8217;s encyclical <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vatican.va\/content\/leo-xiv\/en\/encyclicals\/documents\/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html\">Magnifica humanitas<\/a>. (You can see <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8808\">my blog post here<\/a>.) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/news\/chris-olah-pope-leo-encyclical\">His remarks<\/a> have been posted on the Anthropic site. Unlike some accelerationists who don&#8217;t want to listen to anyone outside the magic circle, he is humble and invites dialogue. Some of the points he makes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>He starts by recognizing how those who work in the AI industry operate &#8220;inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Which is why he welcomes &#8220;Magnifica humanitas&#8221; and calls for dialogue. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>He hopes that &#8220;if this technology is coming, it must go well\u2014for our common home, and for the children to come.&#8221; Note that he doesn&#8217;t assume it is coming.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>He describes it in almost human terms. &#8220;They are grown, on a structure roughly modeled after the brain, on an enormous inheritance of human thought and speech.&#8221; He says they are not the cold beings we expected but developing them is, &#8220;a little like bringing a fictional character to life.&#8221; Note that he doesn&#8217;t say it is like bringing a person to life, but making close as fiction. (Remember that &#8220;fiction&#8221; comes etymologically from &#8220;fashioning.&#8221;)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He names three questions where the Church&#8217;s discernment is needed. For that matter, he is clear that these discussion are not just for the engineers or Church, but for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>The first is our duty to the global poor.<\/em>\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The second is the need for moral imagination and ambition regarding human flourishing.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The third is the need for discernment on the nature of AI models.<\/em>\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would like to ask how a dialogue that goes beyond those in and with power could take place? Many just wait and hope they don&#8217;t lose their jobs or end up managed by a machine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah was one of the respondents on Pope Leo XIV&#8217;s encyclical Magnifica humanitas. (You can see my blog post here.) His remarks have been posted on the Anthropic site. Unlike some accelerationists who don&#8217;t want to listen to anyone outside the magic circle, he is humble and invites dialogue. Some of the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8814\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Anthropic co-founder remarks on &#8220;Magnifica humanitas&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,58,80,11,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-ethics-of-data-science","category-history","category-internet-culture-and-technology","category-media-and-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8814"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8816,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8814\/revisions\/8816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}