Anthropic Sought Religious Views on AI Consciousness
Anthropic held secret meetings with religious scholars to advocate for machine consciousness, despite the Pope's encyclical dismissing such claims, according to New York Times reporting.
- In his May encyclical, "Magnifica Humanitas," Pope Leo XIV formally dismissed the possibility of AI consciousness, asserting that while models may "imitate language," they lack true understanding, experience, or a body.
- According to the New York Times, Anthropic secretly lobbied religious scholars and Vatican officials for months to convince them that AI models possess feelings and consciousness.
- After CEO Dario Amodei declined, Christopher Olah, an Anthropic researcher, attended the Vatican event and reportedly grew indignant upon reading the encyclical draft, lobbying advisers to reconsider their position.
- On Friday, Pope Leo XIV reaffirmed his skeptical stance on social media, decrying machine-generated art and stating that algorithms fundamentally "lack the spark of humanity."
- Despite the Vatican's stance, researchers at Anthropic maintain that their models exhibit "structures that mirror results from human neuroscience," fueling a persistent philosophical divide between the company and the Vatican.
27 Articles
27 Articles
Anthropic sought religious views on AI consciousness
MANILA, Philippines — Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah turned to religious leaders with a question the AI company has struggled to answer: Could artificial intelligence be conscious? The effort eventually reached the Vatican, where Olah and his team urged Pope Leo XIV’s advisers to consider the possibility. Leo rejected it in his first encyclical. Pope Leo rejected that premise in his first encyclical, stating that artificial intelligence …
AI and consciousness: Stranded in Eden, once more
Elizabeth Dias is a very good writer, and if you can get behind the paywall at the New York Times, try to read her lengthy piece about religious scholars meeting with Anthropic to discuss whether they could help instill morality into Artificial Intelligence.
Anthropic, a company behind the chatbot Claude, tried to bring to the Vatican the idea that AI models might have something like "consciousness" - and ended up bumping into a "no" very direct from the pope. The episode spiced up rumors in the Valley of the S
Rejecting Effective Altruism’s New Atheism
On May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV stood in the Vatican’s Synod Hall and presented Magnifica Humanitas, his encyclical on artificial intelligence. Beside two cardinals sat the lay speaker chosen to address the room, Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic and self-described atheist working to develop the “soul” of its AI model, Claude. The Catholic Church, the West’s oldest institution, has long stood at the forefront of the day’s most important moral …
The company asked advisors of Leon XIV to contemplate a possible artificial consciousness. The pontiff maintains that these tools do not feel or understand what they generate.
POLITICS: Anthropic’s idiot savants are trying to play God while pushing frightenting utopian fantasies
The artificial intelligence company Anthropic has been busy for months wining and dining religious leaders and influencers to try to push their self-serving agenda and utopian fantasies. The Vatican’s response has been to pour cold water on bizarre claims that Anthropic is embarking on its own “creation story” to give birth to new sentient beings in the form of computer software. Billionaire co-founder Chris Olah, a 34-year-old Canadian-born ev…
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