Developers Who 'Worship' Claude Like a God – The Rumor of Anthropic Engineers That Silicon Valley Is Talking About

According to a Silicon Valley rumor, some Anthropic engineers go so far as to 'love' the model YES of the company, Claude.

The spectrum of an all-powerful language model that dominates the very engineers who created it still hovers over the industry of artificial intelligence. And the industry already has a fairly rich history with behaviors that are alarmingly reminiscent of heresy.

Examples are not missing. OpenAI's co-founder, Ilya Souchkever, had ordered wooden effigies that symbolized "non-aligned" artificial intelligences, i.e. those that do not obey human values. There was even a murderous sect that wanted to save the world from lethal artificial intelligence.

Anthropic is no exception

G Anthropic by Dario Amontei, it seems, is no exception. According to The Information, anyone who simply wants to join the company must declare faith in the safety of artificial intelligence and pass a psychological profile test. with a reputation that, as The Spectator's Sean Thomas writes, is widely circulated these days in Silicon Valley, some Anthropic engineers are getting to the point of “loving” the company's artificial intelligence model, Claude.

“If so, it fits with an old prediction of science fiction and what we know about human nature,” Thomas wrote. "If we build a superintelligence, first we will fall in love with it. Then we'll love it. And in the end we will offer her sacrifices. "

For years, technology leaders have been stating in a barely disguised way that they are working to create an entity with divine characteristics. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke in 2023 of a “magical intelligence in the sky.”

Artificial intelligence as a new religion

Some startup companies took the idea literally and created chatbots that claim to convey the word of God Himself. One such example is the Bible Chat prayer app, which promotes itself as “the number one faith app in the world,” with “over 40 million” Christian users.

Over the years, the conversation has changed somewhat. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accused his competitors of making such claims without merit. “It's almost like they think they're creating God or something and… it's just not what we do,” he said in 2024, in conversation with YouTuber Kane Sutter.

But for those who tend to see a ghost inside the machine, the belief that they are conversing with a god can have disastrous consequences. Illusions can escalate into what is already described as “artificial intelligence psychosis,” leading some to believe that they themselves are prophets or even divine figures, like Jesus Himself.

For many of those working in cutting-edge AI laboratories, such an attitude could also be a form of survival instinct. As the BBC reported last month, some employees work up to 90 hours a week, in a crippling work culture with relentless performance reviews and frequent layoffs.

The 'magic intelligence in the sky'

The same belief leads some to argue that artificial intelligence could at some point turn from a benevolent deity into a harbinger of death, with uncontrolled autonomous agents causing the fall of humanity. As Futurism comments, in many ways this is the natural outcome of an existential fear fueled by belief in an all-powerful emerging entity.

The same paper notes that efforts by industry leaders to instill in the public an almost religious awe should be sceptical, especially given the huge financial incentives behind the scenes.

Both OpenAI and Anthropic are aiming to go public before the end of the year. And there is much to be gained by convincing investors that one is invoking a stronger intellectual force than one's competitors, even if the reality is much more prosaic.