OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that treating artificial intelligence as a religious force is a genuine safety concern. He made the comments in a post on X on October 3.

“I am very uncomfortable about people trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models,” Altman wrote. “This is a real safety issue. We should be trying to help people make better decisions, not surrendering their judgment.”

Altman also said OpenAI is not trying to build superintelligence as a religious authority and that the company does not talk about its models as conscious. His remarks came a day after he published a blog post describing his company’s mission as “building superintelligence.”

Axios reported that the post was a veiled response to Anthropic, whose chief scientist Chris Olah has held meetings with religious leaders. The debate follows a New York Times report on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical warning that AI systems lack human dignity.

The exchange shows how divided AI labs remain on consciousness and the moral status of advanced systems, even as they race to build them.