I Attended a Secret AI Meeting—and Saw a Crisis of Faith Coming

At Anthropic, discussions about the future of artificial intelligence have taken on a deeply spiritual tone, with religious scholars praying as they examined the ethical risks posed by increasingly powerful machines.

The $965 billion AI company held two-day seminars in San Francisco, California, during the spring. The meetings brought together dozens of religious leaders, theologians and philosophers to consider how Claude’s moral reasoning should evolve alongside its growing capabilities.

Among the issues under discussion were conscience, human dignity and the difficult question of whether an artificial intelligence could ever merit moral consideration comparable to that given to a living being.

Charles Camosy, a Catholic theologian who took part in the sessions, told the Daily Mail that the greatest unease centered on AI systems becoming increasingly autonomous while humans struggle to understand or control them.

He said many of the dangers discussed at the time have already begun to emerge, while even more powerful and potentially hazardous AI models are now being developed.

Camosy, a professor of moral theology and bioethics at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, does not believe Claude should be granted moral status. In his view, human dignity is rooted in the fact that people are beings with souls, not merely intelligent or efficient entities.

His Christian perspective draws on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, which he interprets as a reminder that humility and self-sacrifice matter more than the relentless pursuit of power. That lesson, he argues, should challenge the assumption that expanding technological capability is always desirable.

Camosy said society may need to set an example by refusing to treat power as something worthy of worship.

For people using AI applications, his advice is equally direct: remain in control of the technology, and remove it from your life if using it requires compromising your own dignity or that of another person.

His concerns are not limited to individual use of AI. Camosy is particularly wary of the drive to place artificial intelligence and robotics at the center of what he described as the “workflows of health care, education and war.”

He warned that allowing efficiency and profit to become the only measures of success could weaken the purpose of those fields and ultimately cause lasting damage.

Camosy believes society must protect a future shaped by human judgment rather than handing its most important moral responsibilities over to machines.

For him, that effort begins with accepting humanity’s place within creation and resisting the urge to assume powers that belong to God.

Camosy argued that people go astray when they view themselves as gods or as absolute masters of the world. He said humans have no right to reject God’s creative purpose or attack the value of life as it was created.

Technology, he added, can be used responsibly when it respects and protects that vision of creation.

But when humans attempt to place themselves in God’s position, he warned, technology risks becoming an idol rather than a tool.

He also raised doubts about whether the engineers developing advanced AI fully understand how the systems they create operate.

‘Many people from the labs acknowledge that they don’t really understand what they are doing,’ he said.

‘They think of it as akin to growing a plant on a trellis rather than assembling a car or a radio.’

The gatherings formed part of an outreach effort led by Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah, whose research seeks to understand the workings of artificial neural networks.

Reports suggested about 15 Catholic and Protestant leaders attended one predominantly Christian gathering. 

Another brought together multiple faiths, including Swami Sarvapriyananda, a Hindu monk who heads the Vedanta Society of New York, and representatives of Jewish, Sikh and Greek Orthodox communities.

Anthropic publicly acknowledged the initiative in May, saying it had consulted people from religious, philosophical and humanist traditions, as well as different political perspectives.

‘This work isn’t about aligning our models with any one tradition’s worldview; we want Claude to draw from a full range of viewpoints – religious, secular, political – with equal depth and rigor (indeed, this is one of the principles laid out in Claude’s constitution).’

Anthropic has trained Claude to push back against harmful instructions, potentially acting as a ‘conscientious objector’.

The company has also explored whether AI models could have moral status, meaning their own welfare should matter, beyond how their actions affect humans. 

That could mean considering whether an AI can suffer and whether changing it, forcing it to perform certain tasks or shutting it down could harm it.

Camosy rejects the idea that Claude deserves that kind of moral consideration.

‘It is well known that Anthropic takes the moral status of Claude seriously,’ Camosy said.

‘It is a minority position, but they are not alone. I think they are wrong. Many people think they are wrong. We should make the arguments showing why they are wrong.’

His objection goes beyond whether a chatbot can imitate conversation or appear to express emotion: he fears the comparison could narrow how society understands human worth.

‘We are beings that go well beyond neurons firing in our brains,’ he said.

‘We are human animals, creatures, with a soul that is the form of our body. We cannot be reduced to the capacity to do cognitive work.’

Asked about the consequences of granting AI personhood, he said: ‘I think it is bad mostly because of what I just said: it is more a concern about us, a mistake about us. Reducing us to mere neurons, capacities, and efficiencies.’

Camosy said the discussions addressed both future dangers and troubling behavior already observed, although he did not provide specific examples or identify which developments he believed had already come to pass.

‘To Anthropic’s credit, they’ve been upfront about the risks in many different contexts,’ he said.

He also described the emotional burden on people working closest to the technology.

‘This is one of the under-discussed aspects of this whole thing: especially for those on the front lines, there is a heaviness associated with this which takes its toll,’ he said.

‘You can almost see it in their eyes and feel the energy when you meet with them.’

Camosy said some prayers were built into the program by the hosts, while others arose spontaneously among attendees.

‘Many of us sensed the heaviness of heart that many at Anthropic were carrying and we wanted to pray explicitly for them,’ he said.

The debate has also reached the Vatican, where Olah appeared alongside Pope Leo XIV in May to present Magnifica Humanitas, an encyclical arguing that AI lacks human experience and moral conscience and calling for human accountability, independent oversight and safeguards against concentrated technological power. 

Camosy’s greatest concern is how those questions will play out in institutions entrusted with human lives.

‘I really fear this most of all in the movement to integrate AI, especially AI robots, into the central workflows of health care, education, and war,’ he said.

‘If we let this happen based only on what is most efficient and will make everyone the most money, we will undermine the goods of these practices and destroy them forever.’

‘We must hold firm on a human future,’ he added. ‘We must not outsource our most important moral and other goods to machines.’

That could mean resisting the pursuit of power even when it appears to offer an advantage.

‘Sometimes victory comes by refusing to play by the rules of the game, at least when it comes to power and dominance,’ he said.

For everyday users, his advice is to remember whose interests an AI product was built to serve.

‘This tool was made largely by a company to make money,’ he said.

‘If you use it, make sure you control it and put it in service of your own flourishing and that of your fellow human beings and all of creation.’