Tech Giants Turn to Religion to Solve AI Ethics Dilemmas
Tech companies are consulting faith leaders to instill morality in AI, but experts warn that simplifying complex religious traditions risks distorting ethics.
POLICY WIRE — Los Angeles, USA — As artificial intelligence developers race to build increasingly powerful systems, a growing number of tech firms are looking toward ancient religious traditions to help define the moral boundaries of their technology.
Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah emphasized this shift during the Vatican’s presentation of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, “Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” held on May 25, 2026. Olah noted that the industry is grappling with existential questions that labs alone cannot resolve, turning instead to wisdom carried by faith traditions for millennia.
While companies like OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Microsoft engage with diverse religious groups, critics argue that the industry often treats religion as a simple, extractable rulebook. Anthropologist Webb Keane of the University of Michigan warns that this approach risks ignoring the nuanced, lived realities of faith, potentially prioritizing Abrahamic traditions while distorting others that do not function as systems of moral law.
Anthropic, which has consulted with over 15 religious and cross-cultural groups, maintains that it seeks a broad, rigorous accumulation of human perspectives to inform its models. However, legal expert Paolo Carozza cautions that mixing these distinct traditions into a homogenized “weighted average” of morality may ultimately strip them of their defining characteristics and depth.
Reporting by Policy-Wire (PW)
