Executives from AI startup Anthropic gathered a group of religious thinkers for dinner at an upscale restaurant in April, part of an ongoing effort by the company to convince theologians, philosophers and scholars that AI is a conscious being, just like humans are.
\n\nThe New York Times reports that for months, Anthropic has quietly hosted dozens of religious scholars from around the world in private meetings, asking them to sign aon-disclosure agreements (NDAs) before discussing the moral and spiritual dimensions of the AI the company is building. The outreach included wisdom circle sessions that began in March as two-day seminars, two larger spring gatherings that included Christian participants, and one multifaith session. Anthropic said the NDAs tied to these meetings were lifted over the summer.
\n\nChristopher Olah, 34, one of Anthropic’s seven co-founders, leads the effort. He also heads the team that studies why the company’s AI models, including Claude, behave the way they do. Olah grew up in Toronto in the evangelical culture of the 1990s and has since left Christianity. Before Anthropic he worked at Google and OpenAI, where he developed methods for studying artificial neural networks. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, said the company had made Olah’s…
Original source: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/
