(RNS) — When news broke last week that Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical focused on artificial intelligence would be releasing on Monday (May 25), a wave of debate swept through Catholic and tech circles alike.
According to Brian Green, it wasn’t the encyclical itself, which has been rumored for months, that sparked a “scattering of unease,” but details about how it will be unveiled: at an event, planned to feature not only the pontiff, but also Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, a leading American AI company.
But as critics questioned whether Olah’s presence at the event was appropriate, Green, who works at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California’s Bay Area, was largely unmoved.
“It’s a little surprising, but I don’t think it’s unexpected,” he told Religion News Service this week. “The Vatican has been cultivating relationships with the tech community for about 10 years.”
Green would know. As a leading tech ethics expert operating at a Catholic university in Silicon Valley, he has spent years urging tech companies to embrace more ethical processes and standards. And recently, that has included Anthropic: Green is one of several religious leaders, theologians and ethicists who have participated in a series of sometimes dayslong conversation …