In Other News · United States

Source: Axios

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Saturday took a veiled shot at Anthropic and its work on the soul of AI, saying he was "very uncomfortable" with the idea of attributing some kind of religious power to models. Why it matters: It's yet another point of division between Altman and his former colleague Dario Amodei, whose company has reportedly pursued scholars across faiths to make the case for moral, conscious models.But some of the top voices in AI are starting to publicly line up against Anthropic's efforts to infuse consciousness into models. What they're saying: "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," Altman said in a post to X. Context: Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah has been meeting with religious leaders to consider questions of model consciousness — but also to figure out how to infuse morals and moral behavior into AI. At one point, the Times reported, Olah considered the possibility of models engaging in Catholic-style confession, not just to admit their mistakes but to shape their future behavior. The big...