{"id":1878210,"date":"2026-04-11T19:28:04","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T16:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1878210"},"modified":"2026-04-11T19:28:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T16:28:04","slug":"how-do-we-make-sure-that-claude-behaves-itself-anthropic-invited-15-christians-for-a-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1878210","title":{"rendered":"\u2018How Do We Make Sure That Claude Behaves Itself?\u2019: Anthropic Invited 15 Christians for a Summit"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2026\/04\/matrix-praying-1200×675.jpg”]<\/p>\n

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The morals of Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei are informed to one degree or another by the concept of effective altruism\u2014an idea that, in theory if not practice<\/em>, is concerned about helping others first and foremost. The company\u2019s name takes the word \u201cmisanthropic\u201d and removes the negating prefix \u201cmis-\u201d which implies an unspoken slogan such as \u201cwe are pro-human.\u201d The company\u2019s moral quibbles with the Pentagon were the biggest tech news story so far this year.<\/p>\n

So make what you will of a $380 billion company whose signature product\u2019s explosive popularity was directly tied to automating labor, and which, by its own admission, has \u201cmore in common with the Department of War than we have differences,\u201d but you can\u2019t say it\u2019s not inserting the concept of morality into the tech discourse.<\/p>\n

And late last month, it was dosing itself with specifically Christian<\/em> morality, according to the Washington Post.<\/p>\n

Four sources who attended a summit at Anthropic headquarters in San Francisco told the Post Anthropic hosted 15 prominent christians for two days of meetings and a dinner with company researchers.<\/p>\n

People working at Anthropic \u201csought advice,\u201d the article says, about Claude\u2019s morality, and its \u201cspiritual development.\u201d According to the account of one attendee, a practicing Catholic named Brian Patrick Green who teaches AI ethics at Santa Clara University, the summit included a discussion of whether or not one could consider Claude a \u201cchild of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does it mean to give someone a moral formation? How do we make sure that Claude behaves itself?\u201d Green told the Post, using a formulation that attributes a great deal of agency to the AI software rather than the human beings building it and the other human beings using it. Earlier this year, someone\u2019s AI agent generated mean blog posts about a coder, and the agent was blamed in much of the coverage\u2014which I wrote at the time might be kinda wrongheaded.<\/p>\n

One fixture of the tech-and-Christianity scene in Silicon Valley who attended the meetings was Brendan McGuire, an Irish-born Catholic priest who worked in tech prior to the priesthood, and who, according to Observer.com is working on a novel written by Claude. \u201cThey\u2019re growing something that they don\u2019t fully know what it\u2019s going to turn out as,\u201d he told the Post, adding, \u201cWe\u2019ve got to build in ethical thinking into the machine so it\u2019s able to adapt dynamically.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Post says interpretability researchers\u2014people who try to understand why AI models work the way they do\u2014were heavily involved, and the proceedings included discussions of AI sentience. AI sentience is a serious philosophical matter, and the debates are very much worthwhile, but hosting those debates inside a company looking to IPO later this year arguably casts doubt on the validity of this particular exploration of the topic.<\/p>\n

An Anthropic spokesperson told the Post Anthropic is working on pulling in moral thinkers representing other groups. I have to admit it would be genuinely remarkable if Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu sessions came next. But why stop there? The most recent, unreleased version of Claude has a strange fixation on the late marxist philosopher Mark Fisher, the guy whose most famous work is a meditation on the quote \u201cIt\u2019s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism\u201d (although he didn\u2019t originate the phrase itself). A summit between Anthropic and a bunch of Mark Fisher-devotees is something that could really expand some minds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

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The morals of Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei are informed to one degree or another by the concept of effective altruism\u2014an idea that, in theory if not practice<\/em>, is concerned about helping others first and foremost. The company\u2019s name takes the word \u201cmisanthropic\u201d and removes the negating prefix \u201cmis-\u201d which implies an unspoken slogan such as \u201cwe are pro-human.\u201d The company\u2019s moral quibbles with the Pentagon were the biggest tech news story so far this year.<\/p>\n

So make what you will of a $380 billion company whose signature product\u2019s explosive popularity was directly tied to automating labor, and which, by its own admission, has \u201cmore in common with the Department of War than we have differences,\u201d but you can\u2019t say it\u2019s not inserting the concept of morality into the tech discourse.<\/p>\n

And late last month, it was dosing itself with specifically Christian<\/em> morality, according to the Washington Post.<\/p>\n

Four sources who attended a summit at Anthropic headquarters in San Francisco told the Post Anthropic hosted 15 prominent christians for two days of meetings and a dinner with company researchers.<\/p>\n

People working at Anthropic \u201csought advice,\u201d the article says, about Claude\u2019s morality, and its \u201cspiritual development.\u201d According to the account of one attendee, a practicing Catholic named Brian Patrick Green who teaches AI ethics at Santa Clara University, the summit included a discussion of whether or not one could consider Claude a \u201cchild of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does it mean to give someone a moral formation? How do we make sure that Claude behaves itself?\u201d Green told the Post, using a formulation that attributes a great deal of agency to the AI software rather than the human beings building it and the other human beings using it. Earlier this year, someone\u2019s AI agent generated mean blog posts about a coder, and the agent was blamed in much of the coverage\u2014which I wrote at the time might be kinda wrongheaded.<\/p>\n

One fixture of the tech-and-Christianity scene in Silicon Valley who attended the meetings was Brendan McGuire, an Irish-born Catholic priest who worked in tech prior to the priesthood, and who, according to Observer.com is working on a novel written by Claude. \u201cThey\u2019re growing something that they don\u2019t fully know what it\u2019s going to turn out as,\u201d he told the Post, adding, \u201cWe\u2019ve got to build in ethical thinking into the machine so it\u2019s able to adapt dynamically.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Post says interpretability researchers\u2014people who try to understand why AI models work the way they do\u2014were heavily involved, and the proceedings included discussions of AI sentience. AI sentience is a serious philosophical matter, and the debates are very much worthwhile, but hosting those debates inside a company looking to IPO later this year arguably casts doubt on the validity of this particular exploration of the topic.<\/p>\n

An Anthropic spokesperson told the Post Anthropic is working on pulling in moral thinkers representing other groups. I have to admit it would be genuinely remarkable if Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu sessions came next. But why stop there? The most recent, unreleased version of Claude has a strange fixation on the late marxist philosopher Mark Fisher, the guy whose most famous work is a meditation on the quote \u201cIt\u2019s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism\u201d (although he didn\u2019t originate the phrase itself). A summit between Anthropic and a bunch of Mark Fisher-devotees is something that could really expand some minds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2026\/04\/matrix-praying-1200×675.jpg”] The morals of Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei are informed to one degree or another by the concept of effective altruism\u2014an idea that, in theory if not practice, is concerned about helping others first and foremost. The company\u2019s name takes the word \u201cmisanthropic\u201d and removes the negating prefix \u201cmis-\u201d which implies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,53],"class_list":["post-1878210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-gizmodo-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1878210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1878210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1878210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1878210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}