When AI goes to church
The Vatican rolled out a new encyclical warning that AI should slow down, stay under human control, and not end up in the hands of a tiny elite with all the buttons. That alone would be enough to make the policy crowd sit up. But then Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah showed up and said researchers keep finding weird internal behavior in advanced models — stuff that looks a little like introspection, and maybe even joy, fear, grief, and unease. So yes, we’re now debating whether the robot is having feelings at the Vatican. Very normal times.
The real investment angle: regulation is getting a choir
The pope’s message wasn’t anti-tech so much as anti-runaway-tech. He argued that simply regulating AI isn’t enough and called for “disarming AI,” which is a dramatic phrase even by papal standards. The point, though, is pretty clear: governments, religious groups, and civil society are all being pulled into the AI oversight conversation. That matters because the more this becomes a global moral panic instead of a niche policy debate, the more pressure lands on the biggest AI builders.
Big tech is still in the crosshairs
The article also referenced Vice President JD Vance warning executives from Microsoft, Alphabet, OpenAI and Anthropic about cyberattack risks from tools like Mythos, an AI system that can independently spot software vulnerabilities. That’s the part investors should clock: AI is no longer just a “growth story.” It’s becoming a governance story, a security story, and a political story all at once.
Big picture
When the conversation shifts from “cool demo” to “who gets to control the thing,” markets usually get a little more complicated. The upside for AI is still massive, but so is the regulatory baggage. And apparently, now that baggage includes the Vatican.