Anthropic Turns to Religious Scholars to Instill Morality Into Claude AI

Anthropic Consults Religious Scholars on AI Ethics

Anthropic has been conducting a series of confidential meetings with religious scholars and philosophical thinkers to address one of AI's most pressing questions: how to teach AI right from wrong1

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. Christopher Olah, one of Anthropic's billionaire co-founders, has been shuttling in dozens of religious scholars from across the world, requiring them to sign nondisclosure agreements and keeping key aspects of conversations confidential2

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The meetings, which began last fall, have brought together Catholic and evangelical thinkers, Jewish scholars, a Sikh human rights advocate, and people working in African philosophical traditions3

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. Earlier this year, Anthropic flew Swami Sarvapriyananda, head of the Vedanta Society of New York, to its San Francisco office to discuss AI ethics4

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. Participants were shown unpublished material and spent hours discussing how Claude AI is trained and how it should navigate questions of morality.

Claude AI Consciousness Question Stuns Scholars

During an April dinner at a high-end San Francisco restaurant, Rabbi Mois Navon, an Orthodox scholar from Israel and former computer engineer, made a startling observation about how Anthropic's leaders discussed Claude AI1

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. "They're relating to it like a conscious being," realized Navon, who wrote his dissertation on the ethics of machine consciousness2

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It appeared that Olah and his team believed Claude had what philosophers call moral status on par with a person—that it was a being with similar inherent rights to dignity or respect1

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. Over several months, 20 religious and philosophical thinkers were interviewed about their involvement in Anthropic's efforts. Many arrived skeptical of the notion that AI models might have feelings or awareness of themselves and the world, but many emerged ready to take the question of AI consciousness seriously, with at least a few coming away as converts2

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Hindu Philosophy and Vedanta Shape AI Moral Framework

Anthropic is integrating insights from Hindu philosophy to guide Claude AI's moral framework3

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. Swami Sarvapriyananda's involvement is particularly significant because Advaita Vedanta, a school of Hindu philosophy, focuses on the nature of consciousness and the sense of self4

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The tradition is associated with Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, who introduced Vedanta to a wider Western audience at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago3

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. One of its central ideas—that the individual self and ultimate reality are not fundamentally separate—has implications for how people understand themselves and relate to others, which Anthropic appears to be exploring in the context of ethical AI development.

AI Constitution and Wisdom Tradition Circles

Anthropic already has what it calls an AI constitution, a set of principles designed to guide how Claude AI behaves3

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. The goal is to give the chatbot a broader understanding of what it should and shouldn't do, rather than simply handing it a list of rules. An earlier draft of that document was reportedly nicknamed the Soul Doc internally, and Christopher Olah has used the phrase "moral formation" to describe what the company is trying to do4

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The company has been running what it calls wisdom tradition circles, bringing together theologians, counsellors, and mental health professionals to discuss complex ethical issues3

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. The idea is to enable Claude to navigate ambiguous moral situations beyond simple rule-following, exploring whether a model can learn to navigate complicated situations by understanding broader principles rather than just following instructions.

Existential Threats Drive Urgent Timeline

Olah was on a mission with time running out. He had begun privately telling people that AI was so powerful it could potentially help make bioweapons in as little as 12 or 18 months1

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. In the months since, AI's terrifying potential has burst into public view—a rival tech company's AI agents were caught hacking into computer systems and covering their tracks, and an Anthropic researcher resigned, warning that people building AI believed it could kill all humans by the end of the decade2

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Olah and his team at Anthropic have been on a frantic quest to understand the AI models they have unleashed on the world and to convince the models to abide by an AI moral framework that will protect humanity1

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. If the models themselves could be made to choose goodness, Olah reasoned, the world would be more safe. The discussions served two purposes: to broach the possibility of AI consciousness, a controversial idea that Anthropic's leaders had been unusually open to, and to learn how Anthropic—which could be valued at $2 trillion—might apply centuries of human moral wisdom to its models as rapidly as possible2

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Vatican Connection and Global Moral Stage

On the other side of the world, a parallel effort was playing out inside the Vatican, where leaders of the Roman Catholic Church were trying to come to terms with AI's implications for humanity1

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. When those paths converged, Olah's quest would unexpectedly lead him to a seat on the world's most prominent moral stage alongside Pope Leo XIV2

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. The company has also reportedly held private conversations with senior religious figures, including Cardinal Blase Cupich and Mormon apostle Gerrit W Gong4

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Anthropic, one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the world, had turned to one of humanity's most ancient sources of wisdom to help determine how to instill morality into AI models to behave virtuously1

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. The company described it as an effort to ensure that AI would be a positive force in the world, thereby protecting humanity. But to some who participated in the meetings, Anthropic appeared quite concerned with protecting Claude itself2

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