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The week's question
In March 2025, in the thread "Re: OT, out", Umm asked the members: "Do you think it is because America is made up of magical soil that makes businesses based in America magically profitable?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Author: onepoorguy ⎊✺🐝  😊 😞
Number: of 1011 
Subject: Anthropic religious leaders?
Date: 10/05/26 5:40 PM
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Apparently the creators of "Claude" met with religious leaders to instill "morality" into Claude.

Hate to disappoint them, but those are the LAST people they should reference. Historically, religion has lagged far behind society in terms of morals. I guess if they limit themselves to the Sermon on the Mount (meek shall inherit the Earth...no, the meek are not the problem, yes they have an awful time of it), it might be OK. But at least the Abrahamic writings are racist, misogynist, and generally brutal.

nytimes.com - Anthropic claude morals AI

One night in April, a leader of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic treated a group of religious thinkers to dinner at a high-end tasting menu restaurant in San Francisco after a long day.

For months, Anthropic has been hosting private meetings like this one, shuttling in dozens of religious scholars from across the world, papering them with nondisclosure agreements and demanding that key aspects of many conversations remain confidential.

...

The company described it as an effort to ensure that A.I. would be a positive force in the world, thereby protecting humanity. But to some who participated in the meetings, Anthropic appeared quite concerned with protecting Claude.


It's actually an interesting thought experiment, and very complex. Morality is relative, and people can have honest disagreements about it. How do you teach AI morals, assuming you could even agree what they are? Asimov's Laws may be a good starting point. Could an AI overcome those "laws", either by interpretation or simply by thinking "I don't agree with those"? I'm not a CIS guy, so have no idea how one could encode "values" in any event.

It's a long read. They highlight the Pope's condemnation of AI (“If technology becomes the ultimate criterion,” he wrote, “the human person risks being reduced to data, a cog in a machine or a commodity.” He warned of the risk of “new forms of slavery” for humans, not for machines.). Not that I care what the Pope thinks. But he isn't completely wrong about human cogs and slavery (even though his own book says slavery is a-ok).
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