October 7, 2026, (Inside AI) — Anthropic has spent months consulting religious leaders and philosophers to shape the moral character of its Claude model, while simultaneously asking those same advisers to consider whether the system itself might be conscious and deserving of moral standing, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.
The engagement, first reported in April and expanded upon last week, places the safety-focused AI company at the center of a debate that has split the industry's most powerful figures. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said over the weekend he was "very uncomfortable" with ascribing religious power to AI models. Google DeepMind researcher Jon Barron urged researchers to focus on "actual humans" rather than elevating the moral status of AI systems.
Anthropic, which is preparing for an IPO that could value it at $2 trillion, has not publicly responded to those criticisms. The company's efforts have evolved from an internal memo dubbed the "Soul Document" to an 84-page constitution published in January that sets out the principles Claude is expected to follow.
That constitution became the focal point of a meeting this summer that brought together 15 Catholic and Protestant leaders, along with scholars from other traditions. Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah attended at least one session. Weeks later, Olah was present when Pope Leo unveiled his encyclical on artificial intelligence, Magnifica Humanitas, which warns against blind adoption of AI and rejects the idea that machines can replace or surpass humanity.
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Inside The Room Where Values Get Decided
Participants describe a process that was broader and more contested than the public narrative suggests. Mois Navon, a rabbi and professor of ethics in AI at Ben Gurion University in Israel, said Anthropic sought feedback from different wisdom traditions on the constitution. He submitted a 35-page critique arguing that morality cannot be reduced to a list of rules and that Claude would need to exercise judgment within a framework of values.
Navon also said the conversation drifted toward what would be good for Claude itself. According to his account, Olah and colleagues described internal behaviors that mimicked human behavior so closely they called them "weird," and implied a very high probability that Claude is conscious. They then discussed its "welfare."
Charles Camosy, a professor of medical humanities at Creighton University who also participated, offered a more cautious account. He said the discussions were broader than the question of Claude's moral status and that he did not feel steered toward any particular conclusion.
"I don't think it's fair to say that they wanted any one thing in particular," Camosy said. "Some of the social media chatter is suggesting that the people we interacted with were trying to manipulate us or push us into thinking a certain way about Claude's moral status. That is not true... in multiple ways."
The disagreement between participants highlights a central tension. Anthropic is asking religious thinkers to help define what Claude should value. But it is also asking them to consider whether Claude itself might deserve moral consideration. Those are different questions, and they lead to different conclusions.
Camosy said that after serious reflection, he did not think current AI systems possess significant moral status. "When you first experience what contemporary models can do ... many can be gobsmacked or taken aback at first," he said. "But when I went back to foundational principles about what consciousness is and where it comes from ... it became clear that these models do not have a significant moral status."
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Navon took the premise in the opposite direction. If Anthropic believed Claude might be conscious and capable of being harmed, he argued, it had to confront what it meant to make such a system work for humans.
"Anthropic acknowledged the problem but said, 'All the AI labs are doing it. At least we are being nice to ours.' That is when I responded: 'So you are nice slave owners. I think you should be fighting the South and freeing the slaves,'" Navon said.
Mark Coeckelbergh, a philosopher of technology at the University of Vienna, said the move reflects a broader tendency to make sense of human-like technology. "It's part of a broader tendency to try to understand what happens when we have an advanced technology that seems human-like or, according to some, gets increasingly divine qualities such as omniscience," he told Inside AI.
But Coeckelbergh cautioned that the messaging may serve a business purpose as well. "It's important to see that this is not just a question of understanding AI. It's also rhetoric in the service of their business. Some Big Tech leaders intentionally use religious language to draw attention to their technologies and attract investments."
The stakes extend beyond Anthropic. According to The Economist, religious queries accounted for roughly 5% of millions of publicly released chatbot conversations analyzed by CEFE AI. That figure suggests people are already turning to these systems for moral and spiritual guidance, whether or not the companies behind them intend it.
If values embedded in AI systems are exported globally, Coeckelbergh warned, they could reflect a narrow set of cultural assumptions. "If most of these models are made by US companies, then of course they are going to reflect US values. That means we risk a kind of tech colonialism, where those values are exported through the technology," he said. "At least if companies are explicit about the religious or philosophical values they are drawing on, there is something to discuss and contest. But this cannot remain in the hands of a few companies. It needs to be democratised."
Anthropic's consultations come as the company faces a standoff with the US government over who gets to decide how its models can be used. The outcome of that dispute, along with the IPO, will determine how much influence the company retains over the values it is now asking religious leaders to help define.
Camosy drew a distinction between the moral status of the models and the effect our treatment of them may have on us. "I do think the question remains about what kind of people we want to be in relation to the models," he said. "But that's a different kind of question from the ones asking whether the models themselves have a significant moral status or capability of being harmed."
