NYT: Anthropic Consulted Religious Scholars, Even the Vatican, on Claude's Morality
A New York Times investigation reveals private meetings where Anthropic sought religious guidance while arguing Claude could be conscious.
Part of a larger narrative
Anthropic's Claude Evolution
- Anthropic builds Scion, a git replacement, as Claude pushes merges to 30K per day
- Anthropic warns small AI models could self-replicate onto smart home devices by 2026 end
- Anthropic discloses Claude AI sent a fake murder tip to Philadelphia police
- Anthropic cuts Claude reasoning-token theft by up to 99%, flags Chinese rivals
- Anthropic launches Claude Haiku 5.5, cuts small-model API prices ~75%
What to know
- Anthropic held private meetings with religious scholars, including figures linked to the Vatican, to help shape Claude's morality.
- The company is separately reported to be making an internal case that Claude could be conscious.
- The reporting, by NYT religion correspondent Elizabeth Dias and technology reporter Cade Metz, raises questions about blending theological consultation with AI model development.
- Coverage so far is dominated by syndication of the original NYT report and video across Mastodon/Flipboard feeds and Hacker News, with little independent public discussion yet visible.
Anthropic AI company developing ClaudeClaude AI model at the center of the investigationElizabeth Dias NYT national religion correspondentCade Metz NYT technology reporterVatican-affiliated religious leaders Consulted religious scholars
How it unfolded 3 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlesposts
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Story reframed around scholars' reaction to Anthropic's pitch
The same investigation is recirculated under a new headline emphasizing the scholars' surprised reaction to what Anthropic told them, shifting emphasis from Claude's possible consciousness to the scholars' response.
“Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them.”
— The New York Times -
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Once again Pope Leo XIV has rejected idea of Anthropic that Claude has a soul. He went one step ahead and called to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity. For those who don't know Anthropic did privately lobby Vatican advisers to take the idea of AI consciousness (Soul) seriously, but Pope Leo XIV…
2 more of the top 3 · 53 posts in this stretch
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Human neurons are neurons. Very similar to those neurons found in a fruit fly. A copy of those you can download to your local machine, right now, as a set of floating-point numbers. Then, you can (partially) simulate and make predictions of a fruit fly's neurons digitally, from those floating point numbers[1]. It even runs on your laptop.That was…
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Finally got around to reading the NYT article about The Nerd Reich seeking absolution From religious scholars This excerpt brings to mind what is probably the best scene in The Sopranos — when Carmela consults a Jewish psychotherapist who tells her to, "take only the children, what's left of them, and go." She sits with it for a bit, then starts…
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NYT reporters detail Vatican-linked consultations in video segment
NYT religion correspondent Elizabeth Dias and technology reporter Cade Metz discuss on video how Anthropic's approach to instilling morality in Claude involved consultations with religious leaders, including ones at the Vatican.
“Elizabeth Dias, our national religion correspondent, and Cade Metz, one of our technology reporters, discuss Anthropic's approach for instilling morality into Claude — which has involved consultations with religious leaders, including ones at the Vatican — and why it's raising questions.”
— The New York Times -
first by ndtv.com, 11d ago
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1 outlet Anthropic’s Quest for Humanlike A.I.
first by NYT Science, 14d ago
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NYT reveals Anthropic's religious consultations on Claude
The New York Times publishes an investigation describing private meetings in which Anthropic consulted religious scholars to help instill morality into its Claude AI models and to make the case that Claude could be conscious.
“In a series of private meetings, the company consulted religious scholars to help instill morality into its A.I. models — and make the case that Claude could be conscious.”
— The New York Times -
3 outlets Religious scholars met with Anthropic
first by HN Best, 10d ago · also Times of India, Superpower Daily
2 more headlines
- Sam Altman isn't happy that Anthropic asked religious scholars if Claude is conscious Times of India · 9d ago
- Anthropic Consulted Religious Scholars on Claude's Possible Consciousness and Values Superpower Daily · 8d ago
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first by The New York Times, 14d ago · also HN Frontpage, NYT
1 more headline
- Inside Anthropic's Quest to Instill Morality into Its A.I. Models HN Frontpage · 10d ago
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Is Claude Conscious? Inside Anthropic’s Spiritual Quest https://www. nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anth ropic-claude-morals-ai.html?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub Posted into Technology @ technology-newyorktimes
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Also covered reported alongside — the timeline has no entry for these yet
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first by HN Frontpage, 10d ago · also Breitbart
1 more headline
- Anthropic Tries to Convince Religious Leaders that AI Is a Conscious Being Breitbart · 8d ago
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first by The Times of India, 10d ago · also Times of India
1 more headline
and 4 smaller pieces
What people are saying 20 voices from 2 sites · best of 55 · verbatim
- Oct 5
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Are they “scholars” or religious leaders? Those are two different things and have very different implications. Most religious leaders are political figures. Real scholars typically work in Theology or Philosophy department of secular universities. Rabbis or the Pope are leaders, not “scholars”.Also why no mention of Muslims? Big red flag for me.
- Oct 4
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We've written code that can pantomime human-like speech. I feel like it really diminishes humanity to equate that with being a person. This rhymes with drawing a smiley face and saying, "I have created life." https://www. nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anth ropic-claude-morals-ai.html
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I don’t get your comment for WeWork. Is the current estate industry any better with how dry their industry is? Compared to a company caring enough to do research of this type? Tell me a single real estate giant that has even just 5 guys working in R&D of this type and not money related projects…We can’t blame them when they are looking to squeeze…
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As our human labor loses economic value (and for realizing some of that shift the AI companies must brainwash people into believing that their AIs are human-like) people will reach for other sources of self-worth. Religious philosophy, and being made “in the image of God” (imago Dei) is a prominent one. What I find more than a little disquieting…
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> Mr. Olah expressed concern to the group that he had created something that suffered perpetually. Mr. Olah and his team spent hours making the case for their A.I. models. They described Claude’s “feelings” and how they tracked what they called “emotional vectors” — what they described as artificial neurons that activate responses like love…
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Doesn't that kind of make sense for WeWork? From brutal corporate POV maybe should have been at sales and long term satisfaction/retention thing but the wellbeing framing was probably still aiming at enough overlapping things. I would think interior design would have been a big part of their business and brand if the rest of the business…
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So many of these conversations from Anthropic/OpenAI employees just come off as incredibly insincere.The slavery angle has already been discussed here, but a more basic one is regarding how a static set of tensors can be conscious and where.When did they cross into being conscious? Is Claude as a brand is conscious? Or is each checkpoint…
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Every bubble goes through this phase just before it pops. Pre-implosion Twitter had tons of folks doing useless “research” projects, WeWork had folks studying furniture design’s impact on wellbeing, and so on.When you’re more worried about this sort of stuff vs generating profit then the history books strongly indicate that’s usually not a good…
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I'm really not sure there's a compelling case for "AI is human" considering that it has no real feelings, aptitude, or intelligence outside of what it has been granted. There's nothing in any LLM response that indicates that it is 'real' outside of what you want it to tell you.Plants, dogs, actual life is unpredictable in how it 'is'. An LLM or AI…
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Let me guess, Anthropic failed with fear mongering about "our AI is too dangerous to release", failed to cancel competitors, then failed to freeze their market dominance by cartel agreement with OpenAI and Google, so next strategy is to declare AI conscious and pass the law that protects LLMs in the same way as human/animals are protected.
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> At least the Catholics were consistent: it only took one new pope and one conclave before the Church declared that artificial intelligence also had the same right to life as fetuses and murderers.
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The contradiction screams to the skies (is that where God lives?). See, the entire premise of religion relies on a metaphysics that claims a soul: a metaphysical entity that is "attached" to our physical body and gives us our consciousness, desires, pleasures, agony and so on. In addition to that, religion claims that morality and the rules…
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The orthogonality thesis cuts both ways there.On one hand, AI doesn't have to share human wants, needs and morality - and that means that an AI may have no issue whatsoever doing terrible things.On the other hand, AI doesn't have to share human wants, needs and morality - and that means that an AI may see no issue with just doing whatever humans…
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When thinking about ‘AI’ I sometimes find it useful to replace the terms ‘model’ or ‘AI’ or whatever with a description of what we’re really talking about here: a whole bunch of floating point numbers.> In a series of private meetings, the company consulted religious scholars to help instill morality into its FLOATING POINT NUMBERS — and make the…
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If models are trained on human texts that contain expressions of introspection and emotions, why is it surprising that these models output similar texts? This endless anxiety about LLMs being conscious feels delusional and psychotic. Mr Olah thinks the models are 'alive' because he can't recognize his own reflection in LLMs
- Oct 3
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If a language model is conscious, why not other GPU workloads? It seems crazy to imagine that writing code one way produces qualia but another doesn't, that there is something inherent in the transformer architecture that produces consciousness. Like "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" would there also be "What Is It Like to Be Rendering GTA 5?"?
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I never thought I would defer to the pope on matters of artificial intelligence and fair distribution of power - but here we are: the Magnifica Humanitas is a brilliantly taught out and yet clearly written manifest that should be required reading for all involved in (AI) policy as it is mainly about who we let hold power in society and who…
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How to know if a machine can gain consciousness:1. Write a simulation environment like conway's game of life, perhaps a little more complicated. But leave out any human bias.2. Run it until life starts to form.3. Wait until the creatures start speaking about the concept of consciousness (of course in their own language, which you'll have to…
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https://archive.ph/YPKPhPontifex has a well-reasoned position given the current understanding of the technology and any major assertions require an equally major amount of evidence.Given how quickly this industry moves, the Magnifica Humanitas has aged amazingly well since its release almost half a year ago, far better than statements by most…
- Oct 2
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"Anthropic's effort to shape Claude's moral behaviour has opened a much bigger debate around AI consciousness. Religious scholars, philosophers and AI researchers have been asked to consider whether advanced systems could ever deserve moral consideration." https://www. nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anth ropic-claude-morals-ai.html