Sam Altman criticises Anthropic’s push to explore AI consciousness and religion

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has criticised efforts to give artificial intelligence a religious or spiritual dimension, in what appeared to be a pointed response to work being explored by rival AI company Anthropic.Altman said he was "very uncomfortable" with attempts to give AI models religious significance or treat them as entities that could replace human judgement. His comments come as Anthropic researchers are exploring questions around whether AI systems could one day be conscious and how religious ideas might shape the way such systems behave.Altman raises safety concerns"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.The comments were widely seen as a criticism of Anthropic and its co-founder Dario Amodei, who previously worked with Altman at OpenAI.The disagreement is about more than whether AI…