Tech companies turn to religion to make AI moral, but it's not that simple

LOS ANGELES — As tech companies race to build the most powerful artificial intelligence, some are also asking how to teach a chatbot right from wrong. Their answer? Religion. “These are not questions a lab can answer,” Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah said earlier this year at the Vatican’s presentation of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI. “They are questions traditions like yours have carried for millennia.” Amid this much-discussed turn to faith, there has been little public scrutiny surrounding what exactly these technology companies think religion is — and, perhaps more important, what they hope to get out of it. As executives sound the alarm about AI's destructive potential and debate the need to develop morally good models, they are increasingly seeking input from philosophers and faith leaders. The executives' philosophy goes something like this: that religion can help inform AI to be morally good in an environment where fears about it — founded and unfounded — are hopscotching across the culture. Because these companies are not bound to a particular religion, th