Chris Olah reportedly proposed withdrawing from Pope Leo XIV’s AI encyclical launch over machine consciousness

Letters from Leo, citing The New York Times, reports that Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah proposed withdrawing from the May 25, 2026, launch after reading an advance copy of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical. Two participants told the Times that Olah and his team then privately urged the pope’s advisers to take possible machine consciousness seriously. Olah ultimately attended, and the encyclical retained its position that AI does not experience joy or pain or have a moral conscience.