Anthropic has launched a new initiative to engage with religious scholars, philosophers, ethicists, and cultural leaders as part of its efforts to shape the moral and ethical foundations of advanced AI systems. The company said the discussions are aimed at informing the development of safer and more socially beneficial artificial intelligence models, including its AI assistant, Claude.

Over the past several months, Anthropic has conducted dialogues with experts from more than 15 religious and cross-cultural traditions. Participants included clergy, philosophers, psychologists, civic leaders, and humanist thinkers, who explored questions around moral formation, character development, and the societal impact of AI.

The company said the initiative is part of a broader effort to understand what a “flourishing future” with powerful AI systems could look like and how AI models interacting with millions of people should embody ethical behaviour. Insights from these discussions may influence practical aspects of Claude’s development, including updates to “Claude’s constitution” the guiding framework that shapes the model’s values and behaviours.

Anthropic noted that AI systems absorb patterns of reasoning and behaviour from large-scale human-generated text and are further shaped by developer decisions during training. This raises important questions around what traits an AI system should display, how it should respond under pressure, and how developers can reduce risks such as sycophancy or harmful behaviour.

As part of the research, Anthropic experimented with an internal tool that allows Claude to pause during tasks and review reminders of its ethical commitments before making consequential decisions. According to the company, early experiments showed lower rates of misaligned behaviour in several internal alignment evaluations.

Anthropic emphasised that the initiative is not intended to align Claude with any single religious or political worldview. Instead, the company said it aims to draw insights from a broad range of traditions and perspectives to better understand how ethical character and responsible behaviour are formed and maintained.

The company plans to expand the conversations to include a wider range of communities and disciplines in the future.