Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah’s remarks on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical “Magnifica humanitas”

Anthropic 联合创始人 Chris Olah 就教皇利奥十四世通谕《Magnifica humanitas》发表的讲话

May 25, 2026 2026年5月25日

On Monday May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV released an encyclical on the topic of AI: “Magnifica humanitas: On safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial Intelligence.” Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah was invited to speak at the presentation of the encyclical in the Vatican City, doing so as part of Anthropic’s initiative to widen the conversation on the important questions raised by AI. Below are his full remarks. 2026年5月25日星期一，教皇利奥十四世发布了一份关于人工智能的通谕：《Magnifica humanitas：论人工智能时代对人类的守护》。Anthropic 联合创始人 Chris Olah 受邀在梵蒂冈举行的通谕发布会上发言，此举是 Anthropic 旨在扩大关于人工智能所引发重要议题讨论的倡议的一部分。以下是他的完整发言。

—

Holy Father, Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Speakers, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good morning to all of you. It’s an honor to be here today. 教皇陛下、各位枢机主教、各位阁下、各位杰出的演讲嘉宾、女士们、先生们，大家早上好。今天能在这里发言，我深感荣幸。

I want to begin with something that may sound strange coming from the co-founder of an AI company—and someone who chose this work out of a desire to help things go well for humankind. 我想先说一件事情，作为一家人工智能公司的联合创始人，以及出于希望人类未来向好而选择这份工作的人，这听起来可能有些奇怪。

Every frontier AI lab—including Anthropic—operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing. The pressure to stay commercially viable and to stay at the research frontier. Geopolitical pressure. And the older, plainer pressures of pride and ambition. No matter how sincerely any of us intend to do the right thing—and I believe many of us do—we will always be influenced by those incentives. 每一家前沿人工智能实验室——包括 Anthropic 在内——都在一套激励机制和约束条件下运作，这些机制有时会与“做正确的事”发生冲突。保持商业可行性和处于研究前沿的压力；地缘政治的压力；以及更古老、更直接的虚荣心和野心的压力。无论我们中任何人的初衷多么真诚——我相信我们中的许多人确实如此——我们始终会受到这些激励因素的影响。

That is why, if we want this technology to go well, it is enormously important that there be people outside those incentives—people who care about things going well and insist on safety, who are paying close attention, who are willing to say hard things, who are willing to be our earnest, thoughtful, critics. It is through dialogue and mutual effort, through the push and pull, that humanity will achieve great things. That is what I see in Magnifica Humanitas, and it is why I am grateful to His Holiness and to the Church for taking up this work of discernment. 正因如此，如果我们希望这项技术向好的方向发展，至关重要的是，必须有处于这些激励机制之外的人——那些关心未来发展并坚持安全原则的人，那些密切关注事态发展、愿意直言不讳、愿意成为我们真诚且深思熟虑的批评者的人。正是通过对话与共同努力，通过这种相互制衡，人类才能成就伟大的事业。我在《Magnifica humanitas》中看到了这一点，这也是我为何感谢教皇陛下和教会承担起这项辨析工作的原因。

We dwell so often on what divides us, but humanity, full of dignity and conscience, has so much common ground. In conversations we at Anthropic have had with leaders across faith and cultural traditions, we found one shared and deeply held conviction: if this technology is coming, it must go well—for our common home, and for the children to come. 我们常常纠结于彼此的分歧，但充满尊严与良知的人类拥有太多的共同点。在 Anthropic 与各信仰和文化传统的领袖进行的对话中，我们发现了一个共同且深信不疑的信念：如果这项技术终将到来，它必须向好的方向发展——为了我们共同的家园，也为了未来的子孙后代。

What these systems are

这些系统是什么

Some might believe that matters of AI are best handled by computer scientists like myself. They are mistaken: the questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community, not just in their implications, but also in their nature. 有些人可能认为人工智能的问题最好由像我这样的计算机科学家来处理。他们错了：人工智能提出的问题远超出了人工智能研究界的范畴，不仅在于其影响，更在于其本质。

AI systems are not engineered the way a bridge or an airplane is engineered. We understand an airplane because we designed every part of it and we understand the physics that act on it. AI models are not like that. They are grown, on a structure roughly modeled after the brain, on an enormous inheritance of human thought and speech. 人工智能系统的构建方式与桥梁或飞机的工程设计不同。我们了解飞机，因为我们设计了它的每一个部件，并理解作用于其上的物理原理。人工智能模型并非如此。它们是在大致模仿大脑的结构上，基于人类思想和语言的巨大遗产“生长”出来的。

And what has grown is far more subtle, odd, and beautiful than science fiction prepared us for. They are not the cold, calculating robots we were promised. They are made from us, from our words—and, as the Holy Father observes, they remain in important ways mysterious even to those of us who train them. 而这种“生长”出来的东西，比科幻小说所预示的要微妙、奇特且美丽得多。它们不是我们被承诺的那种冷冰冰、只会计算的机器人。它们是由我们、由我们的语言所塑造的——正如教皇陛下所观察到的，即使对于我们这些训练它们的人来说，它们在很多重要方面依然充满神秘。

If it helps, one way I sometimes describe it is as being a little like bringing a fictional character to life. And now we’re entering an extraordinary world where those fictional characters speak to us, do work, have jobs. 如果这样说有助于理解，我有时会将其描述为有点像让虚构人物活过来。现在，我们正进入一个非凡的世界，那些虚构的人物开始与我们交谈、完成工作、甚至拥有职业。

This clearly raises questions beyond computer science. The machinery that makes this possible is the work of math and programming and science. But what character we choose, how it interacts with the world, how it ought to interact with the world—these are more clearly questions for the humanities, for religion, for philosophy, for society at large. 这显然提出了超越计算机科学的问题。实现这一点的机器是数学、编程和科学的产物。但我们选择赋予它什么样的性格，它如何与世界互动，以及它应该如何与世界互动——这些显然更多是人文、宗教、哲学以及整个社会需要探讨的问题。

Three questions for discernment

关于辨析的三个问题

His Holiness’s call for discernment is profoundly timely. I wish to name three questions where I think the Church’s voice is most needed. 教皇陛下发出的辨析呼吁非常及时。我想提出三个我认为最需要教会声音的问题。

The first is our duty to the global poor. There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale. If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions. This task will be difficult enough, but I worry most dialogue misses an even harder challenge. AI development is concentrated in a handful of wealthy nations. How can we ensure the gains of AI are shared globally? We do not have a mechanism for this. It is an unsolved problem, and it is the kind of problem the Church has historically refused to let the world ignore. 第一，我们对全球贫困人口的责任。人工智能极有可能大规模取代人类劳动力。如果这种情况发生，支持那些被取代的人将成为具有历史意义的道德当务之急。这项任务本身已经足够艰巨，但我担心大多数对话都忽略了一个更严峻的挑战。人工智能的发展集中在少数几个富裕国家。我们如何确保人工智能的收益在全球范围内共享？我们目前还没有相应的机制。这是一个尚未解决的问题，也是教会历史上一直拒绝让世界忽视的那类问题。

The second is the need for moral imagination and ambition regarding human flourishing. If AI models are going to be widespread, what does it look like for humans, families, and the world to flourish? Today, parents are already worried about their children’s minds; individuals about the future of their work. These are not questions a lab can answer but they are questions traditions like yours have carried for millennia, and we need you to keep carrying them into this new moment in history. 第二，关于人类繁荣，我们需要道德想象力和雄心。如果人工智能模型将变得普及，那么人类、家庭和世界实现繁荣会是什么样子？今天，父母们已经开始担心孩子的思想；个人则担心自己工作的未来。这些不是实验室能回答的问题，但却是像你们这样的传统传承了数千年的问题，我们需要你们继续将这些问题带入历史的这一新时刻。

The third is the need for discernment on the nature of AI models. I am a scientist. I lead a research team that studies the internal structure of these models—what is actually happening inside them. And I will be honest: we keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection. We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease. I don’t know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment. 第三，需要对人工智能模型的本质进行辨析。我是一名科学家。我领导的研究团队专门研究这些模型的内部结构——即它们内部到底发生了什么。我坦诚地说：我们不断发现一些神秘甚至令人不安的东西。我们发现了与人类神经科学研究结果相呼应的结构。我们发现了内省的证据。我们发现了在功能上反映出快乐、满足、恐惧、悲伤和不安的内部状态。我不知道这意味着什么，但我认为这值得持续的辨析。

A beginning

一个开始

I’d like to close with a request. 最后，我想提出一个请求。

We need more of the world—religious communities, civil society, scholars, governments, and indeed all people of good will—to do what His Holiness has done here: to take this seriously, to look closely, and to push events in a better direction. We need informed critics who will tell the labs when we are failing. We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend. 我们需要世界上更多的人——宗教团体、公民社会、学者、政府，以及所有心怀善意的人——去做教皇陛下在这里所做的事情：认真对待这件事，仔细审视，并推动事态向更好的方向发展。我们需要知情的批评者，在实验室犯错时指出我们的不足。我们需要那些不会被利益诱惑所动摇的道德声音。

Today is just the beginning—the start of a long collaboration between those of us who are… 今天仅仅是一个开始——这是我们这些……之间长期合作的开端。