Swami Sarvapriyananda: The Monk Whose Wisdom AI Labs Seek

When one of the biggest AI companies in the world, Anthropic wanted to know how an AI should tell right from wrong, one of the people it turned to was a Hindu monk in New York, Swami Sarvapriyananda. At the company's headquarters in San Francisco, the monk was invited along with other religious thinkers from different faiths for discussions centred on questions of AI ethics and the training of its frontier models.

Swami Sarvapriyananda is now coming to New Delhi on October 22 to speak at the NDTV World Summit 2026 on 'Can Code Be Conscious? Rethinking the Mind in the Age of AI'.

Who Is Swami Sarvapriyananda

Swami Sarvapriyananda was born Biswarup Mitra in Kolkata and raised in Bhubaneswar. Since 2017, he's the Resident Minister and head of the Vedanta Society of New York, the Centre Swami Vivekananda founded in 1894.

He joined the Ramakrishna Math and Mission in 1994 and took sannyasa (the final monastic vows) in 2004.

Sarvapriyananda didn't always want to become a monk. As a boy growing up in Bhubaneswar, he aspired to become a pilot. So as a young boy he wrote down a two-item list of goals: number one was to be a pilot, and number two was to find God. As he grew older and delved deeper into spiritual literature, his priorities reversed. Becoming a pilot moved to number two, and finding God became number one.

Eventually, finding God became his sole focus. At age 23, he completed an MBA from the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar and chose to join the Ramakrishna Math and Mission instead.

Sarvapriyananda's parents and grandparents were initiated devotees in the Ramakrishna Order tradition. He often saw his parents meditate and visited the ashram with them. He was also deeply moved from childhood by the lives and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda.

His family initially objected to his choice to become a monk, but they came around later and supported his decision.

He received his final monastic ordination (sannyasa diksha) in 2004 from Swami Ranganathananda.

Before New York, Sarvapriyananda taught monastic probationers at Belur Math, the order's headquarters near Kolkata. He was Vice Principal of the Deoghar Vidyapith school, Principal of the Shikshana Mandira teacher-education college, and the first Registrar of Vivekananda University. He then spent about 13 months as Assistant Minister at the Vedanta Society of Southern California. 

In 2019-20 he was a Nagral Fellow at Harvard Divinity School. The fellowship supports Hindu ministry, spiritual leadership, interfaith dialogue, and the study of Hindu traditions such as Vedanta and Sanskrit within an academic and pluralistic setting. 

The Swami's Popularity

Sarvapriyananda's popularity stems from the fact that he bridges ancient Eastern philosophy with modern science, psychology, and Western philosophy. 

His reach comes from his lectures. His talks on Advaita Vedanta and the Upanishads draw large audiences online and have taken him to TEDx, Google, Harvard and the UN (United Nations) headquarters.

He spoke at the World Parliament of Religions in Toronto in 2018. He has been in dialogue with Deepak Chopra, Rupert Spira, Sam Harris and the philosopher David Chalmers, whose "hard problem of consciousness" shapes much of today's AI debate.

The Call From Anthropic

His popularity explains the call from Anthropic's San Francisco HQ. By his own account, the Claude maker first approached him for an online interview, then invited him to the headquarters to discuss AI ethics, morality and consciousness. 

He has since described the experience at public talks. He has said he was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), so much of what was discussed stays private. He has, however, shared that the engineers and researchers he met appeared simultaneously excited and alarmed about the rapid trajectory and potential future risks of the technology they are developing.

Along with the Swami, Anthropic has consulted several religious and philosophical thinkers, including Catholic, Jewish, Sikh and evangelical voices. 
Swami Sarvapriyananda's interest is in a distinction Vedanta has long drawn: intelligence is not the same as consciousness. At NDTV World Summit 2026, he brings that raging debate to Delhi.

Also Read: Why Anthropic Is Asking Religious Leaders About AI Consciousness