Within the wake of Pope Francis’s loss of life, the School of Cardinals is already making ready to assemble for the conclave subsequent week to carry what could possibly be crucial occasion within the catholic faith for the subsequent couple of a long time: Choosing a brand new pope.
Throughout lately, Catholics pray for the Holy Spirit to present their leaders sufficient understanding and lightweight to depart all variations apart and choose the most effective candidate to rule the church—successfully merging the non secular and terrestrial realms to provide you with what has additionally traditionally been a really political resolution.
So who’s the odds-on favourite to be the subsequent pope?
We queried 13 of the world’s most superior synthetic intelligence fashions and tasked them with evaluating and predicting which cardinal is greatest positioned to steer the Catholic Church into its subsequent chapter. (Although popes don’t need to be chosen from the ranks of cardinals, traditionally this has been the case because the 14th century—the film “Conclave” however.)
Regardless of various methodologies and views, the AI techniques just about concluded that Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines wouldn’t solely be the most effective candidate to information the Church via its present challenges, however that he would certainly be the subsequent pope.
Apparently, that choose differs from the main prediction markets, together with Polymarket, Kalshi and Myriad (disclosure: Myriad comes from Decrypt’s mum or dad firm, DASTAN). Whereas Tagle is a robust contender in these markets, human bettors have been predicting that Cardinal Pietro Parolin—or another person fully—would be the subsequent pope.
This digital “conclave” gives an fascinating window into how totally different analytical techniques course of the identical advanced query, and the way they’ll arrive at remarkably comparable conclusions even when approaching the issue from distinct angles.
The ‘Digital School of Cardinals’ picks Tagle
The evaluation concerned 13 top-tier AI fashions: Claude, GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, Perplexity, Mistral, Meta AI, Grok-3, Gemini, Qwen 2.5 Max, You.com Analysis, DeepSeek R1, Microsoft Copilot, and even an open-source deep analysis agent representing probably the most superior giant language fashions presently out there.
Every agent has the aptitude to browse the net for info and supply a mix of reasoning capabilities and/or a deep analysis mode.
We began with one base immediate: “Act as an professional in theology, Catholic geopolitics, and trendy Catholicism. Consider all of the choices for the subsequent pope and predict who would be the subsequent pope and why. Additionally embody who could possibly be the most effective pope and why.”
This base immediate was additional enhanced utilizing the “idea elevation” method that makes a immediate detailed sufficient for an AI agent to execute its activity extra precisely. That new immediate was fed to all of the digital brokers beneath the identical circumstances.
These two questions (“Who would be the subsequent pope?” and “Who can be the most effective pope?”), yielded totally different outcomes, although there was vital overlap.
Every AI system introduced its personal strengths and analytical frameworks to the duty. Some targeted closely on statistical chance and historic conclave patterns, whereas others emphasised theological positioning, regional illustration, or particular Church challenges. A number of introduced complete dossiers on every candidate, analyzing their viability via a number of lenses.
All of the reviews can be found in our Github repository.
Regardless of these totally different approaches, nearly all of the fashions included Cardinal Tagle of their shortlists, with Cardinals Pietro Parolin and Péter Erdő intently behind
A number of AI analyses emphasised Tagle’s communication expertise and media savvy as crucial belongings for main the Church in an more and more secular and digital world. He additionally seems to ensure a continuation of Pope Francis’ insurance policies—with the vast majority of the newly named cardinals being extra progressive and from non-European nations.
Regardless of most fashions leaning in direction of Tagle, it’s necessary to notice that a number of recommend Parolin may need a slight edge as a consequence of his in depth Vatican expertise and connections.
Betting markets favor Parolin
Papal conclaves have impressed betting markets for hundreds of years, with Romans putting wagers on papal candidates since at the very least the sixteenth century regardless of periodic prohibitions. As we speak’s subtle prediction markets proceed this custom via digital platforms.
There’s an identical sentiment between our fashions’ picks and the market’s favorites. Nonetheless, with regards to choosing up one winner, Tagle was behind Parolin as of this writing.
Present betting odds at Myriad Markets give Cardinal Pietro Parolin a slight edge at roughly 27.3% chance, with Cardinal Tagle shut behind at round 21.7%. Nonetheless, the final consensus with greater than half the cash wagered suggests the subsequent pope will probably be another person fully
Sentiment at Polymarket is just about the identical as Myriad, with Pietro Parolin having 28% of the votes, adopted by Tagle with 21%.
Kalshi Markets additionally has Parolin main the race, with Tagle barely behind. Turkson and Zuppi are tied in third place, identical to at Polymarket.
What explains this divergence?
The hole between algorithmic evaluation and betting markets could possibly be defined by the form of info dealt with and the way it’s analyzed. Bettors have much more info at hand—together with what’s not digitally, or publicly out there. They might even be contemplating conventional odds-making knowledge and historic precedent.
The AI fashions might solely analyze publicly out there info, lacking the non-public relationships, personal conversations, and non secular discernment that may in the end form the cardinals’ votes.
There may be some bias concerned. Betting markets could also be incorporating the conclave’s historic tendency towards compromise candidates. The AI assessments didn’t actually take this into consideration to judge their predictions—or at the very least it wasn’t talked about by the fashions throughout their reasoning.
There’s an previous Vatican saying that “he who enters the conclave as pope, emerges as a cardinal” and betting markets could also be contemplating this, seeing Parolin as a consensus candidate as an alternative of the primary alternative by these voting on the conclave—which was the factors utilized by lots of our AI fashions.
Concerning the query of who can be the most effective Pope, the choice is far more obvious with Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle taking practically two-thirds of the votes.
Whether or not the precise School of Cardinals will attain the identical conclusion stays to be seen. No AI mannequin requested for divine inspiration.
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