Vedanta Society of New York resident minister Swami Sarvapriyananda said Anthropic invited him to an AI ethics discussion, but he told NDTV that The New York Times did not note his attendance.
Anthropic said in a May 19 blog post that an initial round of conversations drew people from more than 15 religious and cross-cultural communities. The company said what it heard could shape Claude’s constitution and training priorities, as well as assessments of model behavior. It planned to widen the effort.
Speaking at the NDTV World Summit, Sarvapriyananda said the article named representatives of several faiths but did not acknowledge a Hindu participant. He said he did not need the newspaper to identify him personally. “At least mention that one Indian monk was there,” he said, according to NDTV.
NDTV reported that Anthropic first approached him about an online conversation and later invited him to its San Francisco headquarters. Sarvapriyananda said a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) barred him from discussing details of the meeting.
NDTV also reported that Sarvapriyananda said Indian news coverage later cast him as the sole guest and spread widely in India. He recalled thinking, “That’s karma for you, New York Times. Take that.”
NDTV also reported that he questioned whether an AI’s ability to solve problems can establish subjective experience, a topic EconoTimes examined in an earlier report on his views about AI consciousness.
