Yet another Hacker News

Anthropic tried to persuade Pope that AI could be conscious being

22 points Topfi 1 hour ago 17 comments

Topfi 1 hour ago | parent

Pontifex has a well-reasoned position given the current understanding of the technology and any major assertions require an equally major amount of evidence.

Given how quickly this industry moves, the Magnifica Humanitas has aged amazingly well since its release almost half a year ago, far better than statements by most industry insiders across a broad range. Whether you are a Catholic, another mono- or polytheistic faith, Atheist, Deist, etc. I really recommend it.

fwlr 39 minutes ago | parent

Love em or hate em, the Popes quite often write some really thoughtful stuff that stands the test of time (e.g. they have threaded the needle on capitalism vs communism for more than a century).

Topfi 31 minutes ago | parent

Fair, also reminds me of Liberation theology and good old Nixons acts against it. Those teachings/writings have also aged very well in my view, the oppositions less so.

ofjcihen 26 minutes ago | parent

If I had to guess I think that’s probably a result of how they’re elected. It makes sense that kind of process involving people in those positions would result in someone insightful (most of the time that is. There’s definitely been some…interesting popes).

KellyCriterion 7 minutes ago | parent

Why is it that only Popes have this ability?

pydry 1 minute ago | parent

Theyre mostly immune to lobbying.

EA-3167 50 minutes ago | parent

Oh I’m sure that will win the head of CATHOLICISM over. “It’s fine, we aren’t glorifying machines over people, we’re actually creating people! You know, kind of like God. Do you like me now?”

pmontra 48 minutes ago | parent

Would Anthropic be allowed to sell LLMs in their current form, and us to use them as we use them, if their were deemed to be conscious? I know that they are not human so maybe slavery would not be an issue but consciousness would open a number of issues.

Topfi 35 minutes ago | parent

Agreed, there seems to be a lot of simultaneous cake ownership and consumption going on here. If Anthropic earnestly believed their LLMs to have a degree of consciousness, their deployment and use of them are both an ethics and labour rights disaster, to be treated accordingly.

More likely, they do not believe this if pressed.

krapp 28 minutes ago | parent

If LLMs were somehow found to be conscious, sentient beings capable of agency and suffering then yes we would still use them. Their utility to humans (and ability to cheaply replace humans in the workforce) is their entire reason for existing. Either we would use them or we simply would not allow them to exist in the first place.

Given how we treat each other - we still enslave other people - and sentient animal species I have absolutely no doubt about it. We'd find a way to justify it.

piyh 5 minutes ago | parent

Women have been able to vote for just over the last hundred years in the US, there's no way we would give robots rights unless forced

devindotcom 5 minutes ago | parent

ted chiang noted this issue a little while back

https://www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2026/06/no-artificial...

csb6 23 minutes ago | parent

Embarrassing that they even attempted to do this. It shows major ignorance of fundamental Catholic beliefs. Go back to your millenarianist AI religion that worships technology and the gospel of VCs.

freecodeio 15 minutes ago | parent

I don't know what's the deal with high tech and religion lately. First thiel and his antichrist bullshit, now anthropic and the pope? What's going on? Can someone who's more in enlighten me?

sippingabonedry 14 minutes ago | parent

"It's a machine.

It doesn't get pissed off. It doesn't get happy, it doesn't get sad, it doesn't laugh at your jokes.

It just runs programs."

SwellJoe 12 minutes ago | parent

The folks leading the AI industry, at least in the US, continue to embarrass themselves and all of us with this nonsense.

There may come a time, but it's silly to mistake the LLMs automaton behavior for consciousness.

Detrytus 11 minutes ago | parent

In Terry Pratchett's "Long Earth" there was a superintelligent AI that got legal recognition as a person by claiming to be reincarnation of some Tibetan monk that happened to die at the exact second when that AI was first turned on :)