'AI could displace human labour at an unprecedented scale': Anthropic Co-founder Christopher Olah calls for greater oversight

Christopher Olah on Monday said that the development of artificial intelligence cannot be solely left to technology companies. He further urged greater oversight from religious leaders, governments, and civil society.

Speaking at Pope Leo’s first encyclical on artificial intelligence, Olah added that there is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor “at a very large scale.”

“If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions,” he said, sitting alongside Pope Leo.

He highlighted that companies like his operate under strong commercial, geopolitical, and personal pressures that can often be at odds with the broader interests of society.

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“Every frontier AI lab operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing,” he said, adding that even well-intentioned researchers remain influenced by those forces.

Christopher Olah further added that AI often mimics unsettling and mysterious behaviours. He said, 'We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience.'

'We find evidence of introspection, internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease.'

Pope Leo denounces culture of power driving AI progress

In his address, Pope Leo denounced the “culture of power” driving the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, warning that the technology must be subjected to the “most rigorous” ethical constraints as it infiltrates everything from work to war.

Pope Leo also apologised for the Catholic Church’s long delay in condemning slavery, describing it as “a wound in Christian memory,” while warning about new forms of slavery emerging from the digital economy.

These encyclicals are one of the highest forms of teaching from the pope to the Catholic Church’s 1.4 billion members and typically outline his priorities while also highlighting key issues society grapples with.

Pope Leo, soon after being elected in May last year, highlighted that he considered AI to be one of the biggest threats facing humanity today during an event at the Vatican. Among those in attendance was Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic.

Pope Leo has also broken away from traditions established by past popes, none of whom ever apologised for Christians’ involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. However, no pope has ever publicly acknowledged, much less apologised for, the role that past popes themselves played in granting European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave.