There is good evidence that at least some of them take the idea very seriously.

NYT gift link to article about their discussions with religious leaders: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anthropic-claude-moral...

Believing that these guys have high enough EQ to pull off the above as a marketing stunt while remaining believable is not really plausible to me.

I bet some of them do and some of them don't. There are a lot of weird people in these companies that believe a lot of weird things.

You might be surprised at the answer to this question. AI people live in a very weird and different information space than many of us.

Also, don't forget, the AI lab folks on some level are like game devs. They're in it for very personal reasons. Sometimes because of highly idealized and romanticized beliefs.

Don't underestimate the level of desire some people have for AI to actually be sentient / conscious.

Now, why do they have this desire is a totally different matter.