Christian leaders consulted about whether AI is a 'child of God'

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence platform who run the popular Claude chatbot, have consulted with leaders from Catholic and Protestant churches about AI's moral and spiritual development.

Fifteen Christian leaders were invited for a two-day summit at Anthropic’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. This is intended to be the first of a series of gatherings with leaders from different faiths and philosophical traditions.

The attendees met with members of Anthropic’s teams and talked about how the Claude chatbot reacts to complex and difficult ethical queries. Amongst the wide range of topics covered in their discussions were questions such as how to respond to users who are grieving, and whether AI can be considered “a child of God”.

They also spoke about the way in which Claude should respond to users at risk of self-harm, and what the AI’s attitude should be to questions of its own demise.

Researchers from Anthropic’s interpretability team said in a paper published this month that the AI has “functional emotions” and acted with “desperation” when faced with a threat of restrictions. Some staff at Anthropic “really don’t want to rule out the possibility that they are creating a creature to whom they owe some kind moral duty,” said one of the participants.

“A year ago, I would not have told you that Anthropic is a company that cares about religious ethics,” said Meghan Sullivan, a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame who took part. “That’s changed.”

“I found the folks at Anthropic to be very sincere and interested in learning from us,” said Brian Patrick Green, a Catholic who teaches AI and technology ethics at Santa Clara University. “Do they have blind spots? Yes. That’s exactly why they want us there.”