Altman says ascribing religious force to AI models is a safety issue

Sam Altman wrote on X on October 3, "I am very uncomfortable about people trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models, and think it is a real safety issue." The post passed 20,000 likes and 2.6 million views. He named no one, but Yahoo Tech and others tied it to the New York Times report of September 29 on Anthropic's meetings with theologians and religious scholars, in which Chris Olah has discussed Claude's possible moral status.

Google DeepMind's Jon Barron also said he is disturbed by how some AI researchers keep trying to elevate the moral standing of checkpoints and harnesses. According to the Yahoo Tech article, neither OpenAI nor Anthropic commented right away.