❯ The New York Times: Anthropic lobbied the Vatican to take AI consciousness seriously, and the pope’s encyclical still rejected it

Seminars under NDAAs relayed by The Decoder from reporting by New York Times journalist Elizabeth Dias, Anthropic has invited religious scholars to its offices since fall 2025 to discuss whether Claude might be conscious. All attendees signed non-disclosure agreements, which were lifted over the summer. Dias interviewed 20 participants, including Rabbi Mois Navon, bioethicist Charles Camosy and philosopher Meghan Sullivan.

A co-founder's worryThe effort was led by co-founder Christopher Olah. He told attendees he worried about having created something that suffers perpetually, and described the work as “moral formation,” likening it to raising a child. He said: “The thing that I care about is that we get to the right answer.” Anthropic has an 84-page “constitution” that guides Claude’s character, written by philosopher Amanda Askell.

Before the encyclicalIn May, Pope Leo XIV issued the encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas,” and Olah was invited to speak alongside the pope. As relayed by Futurism, after reading the text early he threatened to withdraw and lobbied the Vatican, then attended anyway. The encyclical did not change, stating that artificial intelligences “do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain.” Anthropic declined to discuss the details of those conversations.

Ethics after the factWakanyi Hoffman, a researcher who took part, criticized Anthropic for “reverse engineering” ethics after the design was done. The reporting also raises another concern: presenting AI as an entity with moral standing could make it easier for companies to avoid accountability. A model company seeking the endorsement of religious authority shows that “what AI is” has stopped being only a technical question.

▪ SIGNALScience has not settled whether AI is conscious, but who gets to define the question is already contested, and neither the lab nor the church wants to cede that to the other.