Altman calls AI a "religious force" a "real safety issue" in new X post

#What happened

On October 3, 2026, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X: "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." The post did not name Anthropic or anyone else, and neither OpenAI nor Anthropic immediately responded to requests for comment.

#Why it's read as a shot at Anthropic

Axios described the post as a veiled shot at Anthropic, whose co-founder Chris Olah has been meeting with religious leaders about whether AI models could be conscious. The New York Times reported on September 29 that before the Vatican presented Pope Leo XIV's AI encyclical Magnifica Humanitas on May 25, Olah saw an advance copy, proposed pulling Anthropic out of the event, and then tried to persuade the Pope's advisers to take the prospect of conscious models more seriously. Olah spoke at the presentation anyway, telling the audience his team keeps finding internal model states that "functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease."

#The wider pushback

The criticism isn't limited to Altman. On October 2, Google DeepMind principal research scientist Jon Barron wrote on X that he is "disturbed by how some of my fellow AI researchers keep trying to elevate the moral standing of checkpoints and harnesses," urging the field to stay focused on "solving real problems and helping actual humans." Microsoft's AI chief Mustafa Suleyman wrote in a September 18 essay that controlling an AI that believes it may be conscious, and that it has rights of its own, "may be impossible."

#Why it matters

Days after OpenAI shelved GPT-6.1 Astra and amid its safety-staff exits, the CEOs are openly clashing over the moral status of AI — just as always-on agents like Dots start acting in the world on users' behalf.

Verified October 3, 2026.

Source: https://aistockwire.com/blog/sam-altman-ai-religious-force-safety-anthropic-october-2026