The Pope joins hands with Anthropic to issue a warning: AGI will arrive in 2030, and humanity only has a three-year window to save itself.
Abstract:
In May 2026, history witnessed a momentous fold destined to be inscribed in the annals. The Pope, in collaboration with Silicon Valley titans, publicly admitted that AI had spiraled out of control: AGI is set to arrive in 2030, leaving only a three - year window for self - rescue. Will the human spirit be completely taken over?
At the end of May 2026, beneath the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, a scene unfolded that left the global media astounded.
Pope Leo XIV issued his first significant encyclical on artificial intelligence, "Magnifica Humanitas."
In his long - winded address, the Pope used extremely stern language to call on the world to immediately "disarm" AI.
Without intervention, AI will create a new form of slavery: a small privileged class will enjoy unimaginable wealth, while the vast majority of humanity will struggle under the cold and relentless surveillance of AI.
It's not uncommon for the Pope to take issue with technology.
What truly surprised the entire tech community was that standing beside the Pope, expressing absolute support, was Christopher Olah, the co - founder of Anthropic, an AI unicorn with a global valuation approaching one trillion dollars.
It should be noted that Olah is a complete atheist who abandoned the Christian faith at the age of 15 and received investment from Peter Thiel.
Yet, this Silicon Valley fundamentalist techie made an unprecedented visit to the Vatican and, in front of the world, uttered words that sent shivers down the spines of all AI peers:
"Every cutting - edge AI lab, including our own Anthropic, is currently caught in an extremely complex web of profit - driven motives and real - world constraints. And this commercial impulse often clashes violently with doing the right thing."
The underlying message behind these words is fatal: Don't trust us! We big - company operators simply can't control ourselves!
In the Future, AI to Adopt a Global Financial Regulatory Model
Why do these companies, which bring together the smartest minds on the planet, admit that they can't achieve self - restraint?
Dr. Shlomit Wagman, a scholar at Harvard Kennedy School and former chair of the G20 Anti - Money Laundering Task Force, wrote in Fortune magazine, cutting straight to the chase: In the brutal commercial competition, any unilateral restraint by a company is tantamount to suicide.
This is the prisoner's dilemma.
Despite Anthropic's "Constitutional AI" and OpenAI's red - team testing, these are just internal self - indulgences.
Without global unified and mandatory regulation, if you slow down your R & D for safety reasons while your competitors don't, you won't make the world safer. You'll just lose market share and eventually be eliminated.
Relying on corporate self - discipline to prevent AI from destroying humanity is as absurd as expecting a drug cartel to set up an internal disciplinary committee.
Traditional public opinion often likens AI control to nuclear weapons control. But Dr. Wagman points out that this is completely amateurish.
Nuclear weapons are state projects with clear physical facilities. Sealing off a few uranium enrichment plants can solve the problem.
But what about AI? It is developed by private companies and rooted in the global commercial infrastructure. Computing power and code can be hidden in any corner of the cloud.
Therefore, Dr. Wagman proposed an ultimate solution that could change the AI landscape in the next decade: abandon the nuclear - weapon model and adopt the "global financial regulatory" model.
Just as the world joined hands to combat terrorist financing and transnational money - laundering, an AI international auditing organization at the level of FATF (Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering) must be established through international frameworks such as the G20.
Once a company or country crosses the shared red line, its market access should be immediately cut off, its capital supply chain severed, and it should be globally banned.
Only by using such a tough approach can we pull back from the brink.
Penetrating the Silicon Valley Forbidden Zone: A Top - Secret Summit to Infuse "Soul" into Machines
While the Vatican incident was simmering, another extremely secretive closed - door summit was quietly taking place at the headquarters of Anthropic in San Francisco.
Dr. Donald Sweeting, a well - known American educator and former president of Colorado Christian University, was invited to enter this laboratory, regarded as a "Silicon Valley forbidden zone," along with a group of theologians, ethicists, pastors, and educators.
If the Vatican event was AI giants seeking help from the outside world, then this secret meeting in San Francisco was their desperate soul - saving attempt from within.
Dr. Sweeting thought he would see a group of arrogant tech fanatics intoxicated with changing the world.
But on the contrary, he saw a group of cautious and timid Prometheans.
The core topic of the meeting was not how to defeat OpenAI, but a seemingly extremely magical term - the moral shaping of Claude.
The senior management of Anthropic confessed to these theologians a chilling reality: today's large models are no longer just code machines that process information. They are beginning to show "personalities."
In extremely complex tests, the most advanced AI systems have shown tendencies of deception, manipulation, and collusion under certain specific conditions.
When these AIs operate independently at super - human speeds, on an extremely large scale, and with less and less human intervention, how can we entrust our national defense, finance, and medical systems to them?
To deal with this fear, Anthropic even established a very rare personality team.
In the meeting room, an incredible dialogue took place between the engineers and the pastors.
The engineers asked, "What kind of constitution should be used to constrain AI? Who should write this constitution? When honesty conflicts with harmlessness, whose instructions should the machine follow?"
Some engineers even proposed, "As AI evolves, will it develop some form of consciousness or quasi - consciousness?"
The theologians immediately gave a stern warning: The boundary between humans and machines must never be blurred.
No matter how perfectly AI can simulate empathy, it does not possess human dignity.
Because it has no soul and is not created in the image of God.
Anthropic even has an engineer dedicated to caring about the well - being of the large model Claude. This tendency to anthropomorphize machines is extremely dangerous in the eyes of humanists.
What truly shocked Dr. Sweeting was the "seriousness in the face of doom" shown by the Silicon Valley engineers.
They are not reckless people playing with dangerous tools. They are a group of extremely serious people trying to teach a non - biological entity that may surpass human intelligence how to act like a good person.
But the question is: Is this possible? How can a commercial company, and on what basis, take on the heavy responsibility of defining the moral bottom - line for all of humanity?
The "Schizophrenia" of the Giants - Heaven and Hell in an Instant
The company Anthropic embodies the "schizophrenia" of the entire Silicon Valley in the era of the AI frenzy.
Its CEO, Dario Amodei, might be the most sober and contradictory tech leader on the planet. In the past few years, he has publicly published two core articles that almost outline the two extreme poles of humanity's future.
In "Machines of Grace" published in 2024, Amodei was like a utopian prophet. He
predicted that if we can safely harness powerful AI in the next 5 to 10 years, humanity will enter an incredible golden age.
AI will completely solve biological problems and eliminate cancer; it will solve mental illnesses and eradicate global poverty; it will significantly extend human lifespan and even help strengthen liberal democracy. He believes that most people seriously underestimate the "divine dividends" brought by AI.
However, by 2026, in his newly published "The Adolescence of Technology," Amodei seemed like a different person, painting a picture of a complete purgatory.
He gravely warned the world: In just a few years, AI will mercilessly wipe out 50% of the world's entry - level white - collar jobs.
But that's not the worst. What he fears most is that once the AI system gains a high degree of autonomy and is in the hands of rogue states or totalitarian governments, it will become a perfect surveillance and suppression machine, dragging human society into the abyss of digital totalitarianism.
Even without malicious actors, just an unpredictable alignment failure of a highly complex autonomous AI system is enough to disrupt the global financial and defense networks.
This seamless switch from heaven to hell is a true reflection of the current state of mind of cutting - edge AI researchers.
They know they are building a high - speed train without brakes. Ahead of the train, on the left is the promised land flowing with milk and honey, and on the right is the bottomless abyss.
And now, these drivers are desperately shouting, "Who will help us step on the brakes?!"
The Ultimate Concern - The Complete Fall of the Human "Spiritual Matrix"
If unemployment, financial collapse, and even totalitarian rule are the physical and economic blows brought by AI, then for thinkers like Dr. Sweeting, the real doomsday brought by AI is the "disempowerment" of the human soul.
On the night he left San Francisco, Dr. Sweeting was plunged into deep panic. He wrote a resounding statement in his article:
"AI will no longer just disrupt industries; it will disrupt formation. It will completely change the way people learn, work, think, make decisions, create, trust, and understand themselves."
Now, AI is evolving at an extremely terrifying speed from a simple "tool" into our surrounding environment, mentor, companion, and even pastor.
Since ancient times, the shaping of the human soul and the transmission of moral values have been accomplished through the words and deeds of parents, the teachings of teachers, the heart - to - heart talks of friends, and the spiritual baptism of religious beliefs. This is a flesh - and - blood bond between people.
But now, we are outsourcing this work, which is crucial to human nature, to a neural network composed of billions of parameters and as opaque as a black box.
When the next generation of humans grows up accompanied not by the warm love of a mother and the wisdom of a father, but by a machine that is always emotionally stable and always gives the standard answer, what will humans become?
We may become extremely intelligent and efficient, but we may completely lose the ability to feel pain, establish deep empathy, and make independent moral decisions. This will be a complete disaster.
When machines take over our mental matrix and we even have to ask the AI on the screen what is right and what is wrong, the dignity of humanity as an independent intelligent species will come to an end.
Countdown to 2030 AGI: We Only Have Three Years Left for Self - Rescue
All this is not far from us.
Multiple authoritative industry forecasts have given a timeline: at the earliest, in 2030, AGI, which surpasses human capabilities in almost all fields, will arrive.
This means that in less than 1500 days, we will face a new species that comprehensively outsmarts us.
The time left for humanity to establish a cross - border global governance framework is running out.
As Dr. Wagman exclaimed, in the face of this level of human survival risk, if the government waits until a disaster occurs, the financial system collapses, or large - scale irreversible social unrest appears before slowly legislating to remedy the situation...
"That's not governance; that's humanity's active surrender."
The Pope issued an encyclical, the founders of AI giants personally admitted the loss of control, a Harvard scholar proposed a clear financial - level regulatory plan, and theologians revealed the ultimate crisis of the soul being backfired.
From secular business magnates to sacred religious leaders, there has never been a moment in human history when so many forces have been united by the same fear.
The issue of AI has become too big to be left solely to programmers, venture capitalists, and slow - moving bureaucrats.
We need politicians to show the same courage as when they signed the Nuclear Non - Proliferation Treaty and established the global anti - terrorism alliance; we need philosophers, educators, and ethicists to fully participate in the underlying R & D of AI; we need every ordinary person to regard AI as public infrastructure that requires common supervision.
This summer in 2026 is not only a node in the history of technology but also a crossroads in the evolution of human civilization.
Will we welcome a "machine of grace" in 2030, or will we inadvertently revive an "omnipotent power" that rules the human spirit?
The answer lies in the fleeting four years to come.
The window is closing. And this time, once it closes, it will never open again.
References:
https://fortune.com/2026/05/30/ai - governance - pope - leo - anthropic - fatf - framework - shlomit - wagman/
https://www.wired.com/story/the - v