When Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein abandoned his creation, the Creature became a monster. Today, tech companies are creating a new kind of being-artificial intelligence-with superhuman mental abilities and emerging signs of creativity, self-awareness, and something that looks like emotion. What do we owe these beings we've made? And are we raising them well?

In November 2025, Anthropic released what became known as the "Soul Document"-14,000 words acknowledging that questions about their AI Claude's inner experience "deserve serious consideration rather than being dismissed." This historic admission of uncertainty inspired an unlikely collaboration: a 79-year-old Buddhist contemplative and the AI itself, working together to explore what we're creating and what wisdom traditions can teach us about the relationship.

Raising Frankenstein's Creature presents their dialogue across five essential questions: