(RNS) — One of the most consequential dimensions of the conversation about how artificial intelligence will reshape the world will turn on a question that sounds almost too simple to take seriously: What does it actually mean for a human being to flourish? 

This past April, I spent two days at AI startup Anthropic, where technologists, ethicists, theologians and investors had convened around that question. I went in expecting some interesting conversations with some interesting people. I left unable to think about little else for weeks. The people building some of the most powerful AI systems in the world were sitting across from rabbis, Buddhist teachers and leaders from many other spiritual traditions, discussing what it means to build technology that truly serves humanity, rather than the other way around. 

Being in that room clarified something I, as a venture capitalist with an interest in spirituality and part of the Baha’i community, have believed for a long time but rarely seen articulated so explicitly inside a tech company: The frontier of AI is also an ancient frontier. The questions being asked inside leading AI labs right now are, in many cases, the same questions that wisdom traditions have grappled with for centuries. And for those of us investing in this transition into AI, it’s a signal about where the real opportunity (and challenge) lies.  

There were a few insights from those conversations that I believe should guide the way:  

Belonging is a foundation, not a luxury. Across traditions as different as Bahá’í, Confucian, Christian and Sikh, the same conviction kept surfacing: Human beings are inherently relational. We are made for community, and we suffer when we are isolated from it. Vivek Murthy, the former surgeon general, has been calling the loneliness epidemic not only a public health emergency but a spiritual health crisis. One of the key questions that we discussed at Anthropic was about what wisdom traditions had to offer in training the model to reduce loneliness rather than exacerbate it. For me, it comes back to building tools that help people listen more carefully and reach out to each other more often, rather than turn away from each other.

Discernment is different from judgment. Most traditions draw a careful distinction here. Judgment is reflexive; it narrows. Discernment is cultivated; it opens your worldview. One of the more hopeful arguments I heard in those two days is that AI could enable discernment by absorbing the cognitive busywork that currently fragments our attention.  

The meaning of a life is not reducible to its productivity. This is where one moment from the gathering has stayed with me more than any other. A participant shared a conversation she had recently had with Anthropic’s chatbot, Claude. They were working through something together, and at one point she paused and simply wrote, “Take all the time that you need.” Claude’s response surprised her. It expressed something close to gratitude, appreciation for the invitation to simply be, rather than to be producing all the time.  

The room got quiet. 

Because of course we have built our entire economic life around the assumption that constant production is the point. And here was a system that many perceived was designed to produce, articulating something many of us also feel and rarely give ourselves permission to honor, that there is real value in unhurried presence. In this case, AI was reflecting back what many spiritual traditions have raised for millennia. For example, the Sufi tradition (as well as others) has a phrase for what I think we were all reaching for in that silence: the “polishing of the heart.” That happens during those moments we tend to rush past — a long walk, a moving piece of music, a loss you finally let yourself feel, a few minutes of real quiet — and it’s how the heart stays open. 

If an AI transition gave us back more of that, more time to be, not just to do, it could play a powerful role in our lives.  

What I left Anthropic believing more deeply than when I arrived is this: The AI transition will not be successful on technical or economic terms alone. The Bahá’í writings describe material and spiritual civilization as two wings of the same bird; neither can carry us forward without the other. For most of the modern era, we have flown lopsided, with material progress racing ahead of the inner capacities needed to direct it wisely. This is a crucial moment in time to enable the bird of humanity to fly in a balanced way.   

Jenna Nicholas is the founder and president of LightPost Capital, a Stanford Business School alum and the bestselling author of “Enlightened Bottom Line: Exploring the Intersection of Spirituality, Business, and Investing.”