Jared Kaplan, the chief scientist and co-owner of the $180bn (£135bn) US startup Anthropic, said a choice was looming about how much autonomy the systems should be given to evolve.

The move could trigger a beneficial “intelligence explosion” – or be the moment humans end up losing control.

In an interview about the intensely competitive race to reach artificial general intelligence (AGI) – sometimes called superintelligence – Kaplan urged international governments and society to engage in what he called “the biggest decision”.

Anthropic is part of a pack of frontier AI companies including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, xAI, Meta and Chinese rivals led by DeepSeek, racing for AI dominance. Its widely used AI assistant, Claude, has become particularly popular among business customers.

Kaplan said that while efforts to align the rapidly advancing technology to human interests had to date been successful, freeing it to recursively self-improve “is in some ways the ultimate risk, because it’s kind of like letting AI kind of go”. The decision could come between 2027 and 2030, he said.

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AI systems will be capable of doing “most white-collar work” in two to three years: Anthropic’s chief scientist https://t.co/CciDRlxTDH

— Lisa Abramowicz (@lisaabramowicz1) December 3, 2025

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware has captured the essential character of this [iconoclast vs. iconodules] dispute:

‘The struggle was not merely a conflict between two conceptions of Christian art. Deeper issues were involved: the character of Christ’s human nature, the Christian attitude towards matter, the true meaning of Christian redemption…the iconoclastic controversy is closely linked to the earlier disputes about Christ’s person. It was not merely a controversy about religious art, but about the Incarnation, about human salvation, about the salvation of the entire material cosmos.’

Although the above is true, it should be clarified that the rhetoric in the beginning of the dispute did not have an overtly Christological character and did not touch on these matters. Sebastian Brock and others have gone so far as to argue that the entire controversy did not bear any relation to Christology; rather the political element was paramount. In contrast, Joan Hussey adopts a more balanced view and argues persuasively that: ‘the Christological argument for and against icons was not really developed until the eighth century and then not in the opening stages of the conflict’.9 Given the Christological focus of his defence of icons, John’s role can therefore be seen as particularly important, connecting the dispute with the previous Christological controversies and with a long tradition of the semiotic of image/prototype far beyond the language of the Councils, especially if we take into account his possible lack of access to the
proceedings of the fifth and sixth Ecumenical Councils when he was writing his treatises. He thus played an indispensable role in the stabilization of the Orthodox faith for the following centuries. He saw iconological theology and practice as bound tightly with Orthodox Christology. The importance of his theology of images does not lie primarily in its originality; rather, as the recipient and active conduit of the preceding philosophical and theological tradition, he systematically re-exposed and drew attention to new dimensions of the philosophical and theological heritage he had been bequeathed; it is in this sense that he should be credited with originality and innovation. John’s work must therefore be viewed in the context of the theological appeal to ‘tradition’ evident in contemporary and earlier patristic writings, for example in the works of St. Maximos the Confessor. This is encapsulated in the phrase ‘I will say nothing of my own’ (‘ρω˜ μòν οδε´ν’) which is both an expression of monastic humility and a manifestation of a strong belief in the intellectual and spiritual legacy of the previous Christian centuries that continued to develop.

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Happy feast day of St John Damascene. The last church father, defender of icons and highly influential on the scholastics pic.twitter.com/XVvRzg9bik

— Henri of Flanders (@MiltAnselm) December 4, 2025

Confirm our minds, O Lord, in the mysteries of the true faith, set forth with power by thy servant John of Damascus; that we, with him, confessing Jesus to be true God and true Man, and singing the praises of the risen Lord, may, by the power of the resurrection, attain to eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for evermore.

On this day we remember St. John of Damascus. Monk, priest, defender of the faith, and a voice who spoke the truth with clarity and courage. He is often remembered as "the last of the Greek Fathers."
He defended the use of icons not for beauty’s sake, but because the Incarnation… pic.twitter.com/F7PeeS3DJ7

— Bishop Stephen Smuts (@BishopSmuts) December 4, 2025

Make us, we beseech thee, O Lord our God, watchful and heedful in awaiting the coming of thy Son Christ our Lord; that when he shall come and knock, he shall find us not sleeping in sin, but awake and rejoicing in his praises; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

I love this view of beautiful Bakewell, and perhaps never more so than on quiet winter mornings. I just see a jumble of dreaming, higgledy-piggledy rooftops, the woodsmoke coiling up lazily from the chimneys to meet the mist over the hills. And beneath it all, the murmuring,… pic.twitter.com/NJzprvitPw

— peaklass (@peaklass1) December 4, 2025

I love thee, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies.

The cords of death encompassed me,
the torrents of perdition assailed me;
the cords of Sheol entangled me,
the snares of death confronted me.

In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears
Then the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations also of the mountains trembled
and quaked, because he was angry.
Smoke went up from his nostrils,
and devouring fire from his mouth;
glowing coals flamed forth from him.
He bowed the heavens, and came down;
thick darkness was under his feet.
He rode on a cherub, and flew;
he came swiftly upon the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his covering around him,
his canopy thick clouds dark with water.
Out of the brightness before him
there broke through his clouds
hailstones and coals of fire.
The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
and the Most High uttered his voice,
hailstones and coals of fire.
And he sent out his arrows, and scattered them;
he flashed forth lightnings, and routed them.
Then the channels of the sea were seen,
and the foundations of the world were laid bare,
at thy rebuke, O Lord,
at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.

He reached from on high, he took me,
he drew me out of many waters.
He delivered me from my strong enemy,
and from those who hated me;
for they were too mighty for me.
They came upon me in the day of my calamity;
but the Lord was my stay.
He brought me forth into a broad place;
he delivered me, because he delighted in me.

The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness;
according to the cleanness of my hands he recompensed me.

–Psalm 18:1-20

A snowy morning on Prince Edward Island. ❄️❄️❄️#pei #Canada #winter #StormHour pic.twitter.com/wj9IUoOAh5

— Brian Wagner (@DrummerBoy2112) December 3, 2025