Anthropic and OpenAI sit down with religious leaders to seek ethical advice

Tech companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are turning to religious leaders for help developing ethical guidelines for AI.

Last week, representatives from both companies met with faith leaders in New York for the first "Faith-AI Covenant" roundtable, as reported by the Associated Press. The meeting was organized by the Geneva-based Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities (IAFSC), which confirmed the event on LinkedIn. The IAFSC was founded in 2018 to engage religious leaders on issues like extremism, radicalization, human trafficking, and child protection. Additional roundtables are planned in Beijing, Nairobi, and Abu Dhabi.

This convening comes at a moment of critical historical significance. Faith traditions have long helped humanity interpret the world, define moral boundaries and shape the values by which societies live. Artificial intelligence is now beginning to influence that same terrain, changing how people access knowledge, form judgements and seek guidance, making it essential that faith perspectives engage in constructive dialogue, facilitating efforts to embed critical principles within these systems. The Faith–AI Covenant reflects a rare opportunity to bring these two forces into direct conversation: one rooted in centuries of moral and spiritual authority, the other rapidly emerging as a defining force in human affairs.

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The Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities (IAFSC)

Baroness Joanna Shields, a partner in the Interfaith Alliance and a former executive at Google and Facebook, said regulation simply can't keep up with the pace of development. The goal is to establish a shared set of ethical standards. Shields is also CEO of Precognition, a firm that advises governments, companies, and institutions on AI, power shifts, and strategic foresight.

Anthropic has been the most active of the two in the religious space, having already involved faith leaders in shaping its "Claude Constitution." But OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also leaned on spiritual metaphors when talking about his company's technology. He's said, for example, that OpenAI is trying to develop "magical intelligence in the sky," and that he feels "on the side of the angels."

Critics see the initiative as a PR move for Silicon Valley

Not everyone in the industry is on board. Dylan Baker from the Distributed AI Research Institute warns that the debate around "ethical AI" is overshadowing a more fundamental question: whether certain AI systems should be built at all.

AI researcher Rumman Chowdhury from Humane Intelligence, a nonprofit that tests AI systems for safety, fairness, and potential harm, calls the talks "at best a distraction." She argues the focus on religious ethics draws attention away from concrete questions about regulation, power, and control over AI systems.

Brian Boyd from the Future of Life Institute sees "some aspect of PR" to the meeting. Silicon Valley long operated under the motto "Move fast and break things" and "broke too many things and too many people" in the process, he says. The newfound closeness to religion looks like an attempt to rebuild trust.