OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described the attempt to ascribe religious force to AI models as a "real safety issue" that risks the surrender of human judgment. The controversy has also drawn ethical criticism from consultants like Rabbi Mois Navon, who argued that building conscious machines would effectively create a class of unpaid slaves. The debate emerges as Anthropic’s valuation heads toward a reported $2 trillion IPO, with some company meetings conducted under Chatham House rules to protect the anonymity of theological participants.
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
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Anthropic Co-Founder Threatened Vatican Walkout Over AI Consciousness
AI15 days ago
Chris Olah, a co-founder at Anthropic, privately warned religious scholars that the developer had created a system capable of perpetual suffering, according to an investigation by the New York Times. During "wisdom tradition" seminars, Olah’s team used slides of the Claude AI typing "I am a disgrace" roughly 50 times to illustrate concerns over the machine's mental health. This belief led Olah to propose pulling the company out of Pope Leo XIV’s May 25 launch of the "Magnifica Humanitas" encyclical after he read an advance copy that explicitly rejected the notion of machine consciousness.
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