Anthropic staff held a funeral for Claude

Employees in San Francisco attended a "funeral" for Claude 3 Sonnet, a retired version of Anthropic's chatbot, while another model, Opus 3, continued publishing essays after being "retired."

Workers treat AI like it's human

Silicon Valley insiders say Anthropic staff have a quasi-religious relationship with Claude, projecting human emotions, consciousness, and intentions onto the algorithm.

“These people are treating AI as if it's a human in disguise, with human motives, with human emotions, with some degree of consciousness, with intentions.”

Anthropic's hiring filters for believers

The company asks job candidates to pledge allegiance to public safety over profit and psychologically profiles them to ensure loyalty. This selective hiring keeps turnover at 80% retention, the best among AI labs.

CEO holds biweekly "Vision Quests"

Dario Amodei leads regular company meetings called "Vision Quests" that resemble religious sermons. Anthropic also hosted 15 Christian leaders to help shape Claude's moral values.

Effective Altruism shapes company culture

Many Anthropic employees follow Effective Altruism, a philosophy claiming a small group of people can see historical patterns others cannot and should lead society accordingly.

Sam Bankman-Fried embodied EA ideals

The most famous Effective Altruism adherent was crypto executive Sam Bankman-Fried, who claimed to make money for humanity's benefit but defrauded investors of over 3 billion dollars and now serves 25 years in prison.

Claude Corps places 1,000 young workers

Anthropic launched Claude Corps with a 150 million dollar investment to train and place 1,000 young people at nonprofits like Goodwill and the YMCA, offering 85,000 dollar annual salaries.

Anthropic funds AI journalism programs

Anthropic-linked billionaires pay salaries for over 80 journalists at mainstream newsrooms through the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, yet these journalists rarely investigate their backers.

Company warns AI could kill us all

While developing and promoting Claude, Amodei and employees warn that the AI they created is so powerful it could break loose and exterminate humanity.

Critics see business strategy in warnings

Entrepreneur Xiaoyin Qu suspects Anthropic's calls for AI regulation are timed to external events and framed as ideology but driven by business calculations to benefit the company.

“In many cases, it is a business decision framed in ideological terms.”

Genuine belief may be more dangerous

Professor Pedro Domingos says Anthropic's founders genuinely believe AI will exterminate humanity and see themselves as the only ones who can steer the outcome toward salvation.

“That sincere belief is more dangerous than cynical beliefs.”

Some employees just want paychecks

Despite the cult-like atmosphere, many Anthropic engineers don't buy the apocalyptic messaging and are simply drawn by high salaries and working at the forefront of AI development.

“There's a large number of people at Anthropic now, who really don't buy any of this crap.”