Rumours are spreading through the tech industry that workers at a major artificial intelligence lab are treating their own creation like a divine figure. Recent reports suggest that the demanding environment inside some frontier AI firms is pushing staff towards extreme behaviour.
As pressure mounts behind closed doors, questions are being raised about what happens when the people building tomorrow's technology become increasingly consumed by it.
Anthropic Workers Are Rumoured to Worship Claude
The fear of an all-powerful AI taking charge over its creators keeps haunting the industry. Tech circles have already witnessed plenty of strange, cultish behaviour, from OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever commissioning wooden effigies to represent 'unaligned' AI systems to a murder sect that claimed it wanted to save the world from killer AI.
Anthropic, Dario Amodei's AI safety and research company, has now been drawn into similar rumours. According to reporting from The Information, cited by Futurism, prospective employees are required to pledge allegiance to AI safety and undergo a psychological profiling test.
Word on the street in Silicon Valley — according to Sean Thomas writing in The Spectator — is that certain Anthropic engineers are allegedly going as far as 'worshipping' Claude, the firm's conversational AI system.
Thomas suggested that, if the rumours are true, they fit with an old science-fiction prediction and ideas about human nature: once a superintelligence is created, people could first fall in love with it, then worship it and eventually make sacrifices to it.
When AI Starts Looking Like a God
For years, tech leaders have hinted at the creation of an extraordinarily powerful form of artificial intelligence. OpenAI boss Sam Altman described his company's ultimate product in 2023 as 'magic intelligence in the sky'.
Some emerging tech firms have taken the idea of AI and religion in a more literal direction, building chatbots designed to provide spiritual guidance. Bible Chat, for instance, describes itself as the 'number one faith app in the world' and says it has more than 40 million users.
The debate has also drawn criticism from Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, who accused unnamed AI rivals of talking as though they were trying to create a single, all-powerful AI.
'It's almost as if they kind of think they're creating God or something and... it's just — that's not what we're doing,' he told content creator Kane Sutter during a 2024 interview.
The Mental Health Risks of AI Worship
For people who begin interpreting AI interactions as evidence of supernatural or divine forces, the consequences can be serious. Futurism has highlighted cases involving what has been described as 'AI psychosis', including people developing delusional beliefs that they are prophets or even divine figures such as Jesus.
The intense environment inside frontier AI companies provides another part of the picture. A BBC report published last month found that some employees at AI companies said they were working as many as 90 hours a week, amid accounts of demanding performance reviews and frequent layoffs.
AI Fear, Pressure and the Money Behind It
That environment feeds into a wider debate over whether increasingly powerful AI systems could eventually become a threat rather than a benefit, with critics warning about the possibility of rogue systems causing catastrophic harm.
Such warnings have become increasingly prominent within the industry itself. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently called for AI development to slow down so that safety measures can catch up, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also acknowledged growing concerns about AI safety.
There are also enormous financial stakes surrounding the AI race. Anthropic is reportedly preparing for a potential public offering later this year, while OpenAI has now ruled out an IPO in 2026, according to Altman.
That makes the industry's increasingly grand claims about the power and future of AI worth examining closely — particularly when companies developing these systems are simultaneously competing for capital, customers and market dominance.
The rumours surrounding Anthropic's alleged 'Claude worship' remain just that: rumours. But they tap into a much larger question facing the AI industry — what happens when the people building increasingly powerful systems begin to treat those systems as something far greater than technology?
