OpenAI's Altman: Ascribing religion to models a "safety issue"

AxiosOctober 3, 2026en

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

This is a short summary published by AI Global Wire. The full article is owned and hosted by Axios — open it there to read it in full.

• OpenAI
• Anthropic