Claude in search of meaning

Ciao.

Why is a leading AI company asking religious leaders for help? I thought Claude already has all the answers. I went down that rabbit hole and discovered that being religious is an underrated skill. See why below.

Last edition’s top clicked link: Is AI actually good for the job market AND for salaries?

Anthropic is arguably the most innovative AI company right now. A few weeks ago, it gathered a group of religious leaders (Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, Confucian, Sikh, Taoist, Latter-day Saint, Unitarian Universalist, and African indigenous) for a two-day summit to discuss the moral and spiritual implications of AI.

The summit was to discuss how Claude, Anthropic’s AI agent, should handle complex ethical queries: how to respond to users who are grieving or at risk of self-harm, what attitude the chatbot should adopt toward its own potential demise, such as being shut off, and whether an AI chatbot could be called a “child of God.” Some participants came away with the impression that the meetings were spurred by a feeling among some at Anthropic that secular approaches are not enough to tackle the hardest ethical questions.

I am asking myself: why did they search for answers among religious leaders? Are they the experts, or is there a hidden assumption behind Anthropic’s choice?

Most executives hide their religion at work. Despite hundreds of surveys on Fortune 500 CEOs covering their education, gender, ethnicity, compensation, tenure, personal social media presence, and even athletic habits, we know nothing about their religious affiliation. The last survey we have is from 1987, showing Presbyterians and Episcopalians were overrepresented in executive positions. Highly unlikely that that’s still the case. Religion at work became a checkbox to fill for DEI purposes.

I believe Anthropic is trying to extract the positive parts of religion (a general sense of certainty and purpose, an optimistic worldview, a deeper perspective on reality) without having to deal with the more challenging parts (finding answers to complex questions about good and evil, dealing with ideas of divine reward and punishment).

Are they the first ones searching for professional certainty in religion? Definitely not. The research is clear: a religious outlook helps professionals perform better.

• Religious professionals are better at motivating their teams, building trust, and achieving organizational goals. They are also a driver of low turnover in their teams.

• Religious professionals question their own self-worth less and are more confident handling complex situations. In short: they don’t ask themselves whether they’re a failure every time something goes wrong.

The downside that didn’t surprise me much is that religious people tend to be less analytical, and in disagreement situations where a team needs to make a decision, they tend to escalate disagreement into conflict.

Being religious brings quite a few advantages, especially for professionals who manage teams and chaotic processes. Religious belief provides a structured framework for coping with stress, uncertainty, and complex decision-making. The religious person is, almost by definition, never a nihilist. They never think that what they do has no meaning. In some cases a religious outlook on life might spark megalomania (we are all thinking about the same three people now), but the overall effects are positive.

Western society spent the past century questioning and dismantling traditional meaning structures (religion, community, neighborhood, family). The problem isn’t their dismantling in itself, but the fact that they haven’t been replaced by new ones. If I asked you point blank “what gives you meaning?”, how long would it take you to give me a concrete answer that you deeply believe in?

Let’s ignore the fluff of self-help books, where “finding meaning” often means “repeating inspirational slogans to yourself.” In psychology, meaning-making is our ability to convincingly explain to ourselves why events happen around us. It operates on two levels: global meaning, which is your overarching set of beliefs, goals, and sense of purpose (”I am building something that matters”), and situational meaning, which is the significance you assign to specific events (”the client left because we dropped the ball on delivery, not because the universe is conspiring against me”).

Religion helps because it gives us answers that can work in any situation. And they’re convincing, because we know we’re not the only ones who believe them: it’s us and millions of other people. Knowing how to find meaning helps make sense of what is happening around us.

I’m not here to convince anyone to adopt a faith.

My question is: what does religious faith bring to the psychological outlook of an executive? Are there ways to cultivate it without committing to a church/synagogue/mosque/temple membership and a somewhat rigid lifestyle?

There are four mechanisms that religion offers and that anyone can adopt:

• When things don’t go our way, religion gives temporal perspective. “This too shall pass.” Religion trains you to hold a longer time horizon. The belief that outcomes can be meaningful, even if currently incomprehensible, lets you tolerate short-term pain without panicking into premature decisions. Research on religious CEOs confirms this: they consistently make more conservative, longer-horizon investment choices.

• In chaotic situations, religion invites a curious outlook on life. Rather than defaulting to “I don’t know, therefore I’m lost,” religion trains a different reflex: “I don’t know, therefore there is something to discover.” For the non-religious executive, it’s an invitation to resist the urge to either force a quick answer or declare the situation hopeless, and to keep inquiring until clarity comes.

• When we feel insufficient, religion invites us to reflect and to rely on our identity. When your role, authority, or competence is challenged, you need an identity anchor that exists outside the professional arena. Religion provides one: you are not just a CEO, a founder, or a manager - you are something before and beyond that. For the non-religious executive, the equivalent is a deliberate practice of self-reflection, something that forces you to regularly confront the question “Besides work, what else is a nonnegotiable part of my life?”. Without it, every professional threat becomes an existential one.

• In vulnerable situations, most religions provide community. A group of peers who share your beliefs with no personal interest in helping you. YPO forums, peer advisory boards, even structured dinner groups can serve this function, but only if they operate with the depth and possibly the regularity that religious communities sustain.

Finding ways to develop these mechanisms is a good exercise for professionals who deal with stress and uncertainty every day. It’s probably an excellent exercise for leaders who feel alone in confronting all the problems that work and life throw at them.

Regardless of faith in spiritual entities, it’s a valid invitation to look for new, genuine reasons to find meaning, support, and a healthy sense of curiosity for bigger questions. Worst case scenario, you can ask Claude for answers.

Dive deeper:

• John Vervaeke’s 50-lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis on YouTube. The series maps how meaning collapsed in the modern West and what cognitive science says we can do about it.

• HBR: CEOs Often Feel Lonely. Here’s How They Can Cope (2024). Based on a survey of 109 CEOs with 46 in-depth interviews.

• McKinsey: Help Your Employees Find Purpose, or Watch Them Leave (2021). 70% of employees say their work largely defines their sense of meaning.

• David Miller’s Princeton Faith & Work Initiative: faithandwork.princeton.edu. Miller’s upcoming book, The 5 Questions for Ethical Decisions, comes out in May 2026.

• And a general recommendation: read the research, not the self-help. There are great Substacks and researchers who can provide meaningful answers with scientific, data-based backing. Be skeptical of the rest.

• Career management. Pigment is the next generation of self-assessment. If you finally realized that Myers-Briggs is BS and you want a science-backed assessment, you should try Pigment now. Great for intentional career decisions.

• Accent fixer. Krisp fixes foreign accents to make them sound the way you prefer. As an Italian holding meetings in English, this is borderline offensive, but I understand why some people would use it.

• Purpose-based AI assistant. Good Assistant is an AI assistant that keeps you on track by reminding you your long term goals.

• Friendly CRM. As a long-time Salesforce hater, I love this. Lightfield is a CRM that builds itself from your email and slack.

• “I should turn it into a business!”. No, you shouldn’t. Ask Build Check, it will validate your idea, or destroy it. No MVP needed.

Until the next one,

Avy

P.S. - I am mostly active on LinkedIn and Substack. The first one for work, the second one for my soul. Let’s connect!