This week, Max Read talks to the Times religion correspondent Elizabeth Dias, the tech reporter Erin Griffith and the opinion writer David Wallace-Wells about Anthropic’s private meetings with religious scholars on A.I. consciousness and how to make Claude “good,” its differences with the Vatican and the new belief systems taking shape in Silicon Valley.

Panelists:

• Elizabeth Dias, national religion correspondent for The New York Times.
• Erin Griffith, a tech reporter for The New York Times.
• David Wallace-Wells, an opinion writer for The New York Times.

Additional Reading:

• Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them.
• What Would You Do If Your Employer Could Destroy the World? Exit interviews with defectors from OpenAI, Anthropic and DeepMind.
• I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken
   

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This week, after months in which rogue agents have caused havoc across the internet, tech’s most powerful leaders joined President Trump at the White House to rebrand A.I. At the same time, two of the biggest companies in the field — OpenAI and Meta — released what they say are their most useful (and cutest) A.I. tools to date: personal assistants. To discuss it all, we’re joined by the Times tech reporters Mike Isaac, Erin Griffith and Eli Tan. We’ll discuss how things can be more dangerous and potentially more transformative than ever, and what it’s like to hand your life over to Meta’s Muse.

Panelists:

• Erin Griffith, a reporter for The New York Times who covers start-ups and venture capital.
• Mike Isaac, a reporter for The New York Times who covers Silicon Valley and artificial intelligence companies.
• Eli Tan, a reporter for The New York Times who covers Meta and the tech industry.

Additional Reading:

• ​​OpenAI Ignored Employees’ Warnings About Safely Testing A.I. Models
• Who Attended Trump’s A.I. Luncheon, and Who Sat Where
• F.T.C. Investigates OpenAI and Anthropic Over Potential Consumer Harms
• I Gave My Life Over to Meta’s A.I. Agent and Was Blown Away
• OpenAI Unveils Dots, New A.I. Agents to Rival Meta’s Muse
• Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows sweeping AI vision, surging costs
• How Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes

We want to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore stories from the wild frontier of tech.

What’s real? What’s hype? “Hard Fork” is here to help you make sense of it. Tune in every Friday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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