AI and Commodification of Religion

Johan Eddebo is a researcher at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society(CRS), Uppsala University. The post is a part the Sacralization of AI series.

“In the beginning was the word. Language is the operating system of human culture. From language emerges myth and law, gods and money, art and science, friendships and nations and computer code. A.I.’s new mastery of language means it can now hack and manipulate the operating system of civilization. By gaining mastery of language, A.I. is seizing the master key to civilization, from bank vaults to holy sepulchers.

What would it mean for humans to live in a world where a large percentage of stories, melodies, images, laws, policies and tools are shaped by nonhuman intelligence, which knows how to exploit with superhuman efficiency the weaknesses, biases and addictions of the human mind — while knowing how to form intimate relationships with human beings? In games like chess, no human can hope to beat a computer. What happens when the same thing occurs in art, politics or religion?”

—Yuval Harari, Tristan Harris, and Aza Raskin [1]

The words of Harari et al. above are symptomatic of contemporary technological culture’s preoccupation with spectacular AI—with the awesome and almost redemptive promises attributed to this really not-so-novel form of technology through what’s perhaps best described as a highly effective viral marketing endeavour.

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Sacralization of AI

Yulia Razmetaeva is a visiting researcher at Uppsala University (Sweden) and Head of the Center for Law, Ethics and Digital Technologies at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University (Ukraine). The post is a part the Sacralization of AI series.

We created AI. Now, AI is re-creating us. Smart algorithms have already changed much in our societies and lives. Artificial intelligence has changed our daily habits, decision-making processes, work environments, transportation management, natural disaster response and recovery, peacetime elections, and the defense of nations in wartime. There will be even more changes when we replace even more human effort with that of machines. There’s no way we can do without algorithms—they are indispensable, and we now rely on them for each and every step we take. As AI seems to have penetrated every tier of our lives, it is now part of the atmosphere, along with oxygen, and is essentially perceived as a deity or holy spirit that is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent.

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(Un)friendly Algorithm: Religious Freedom and Digital Technologies

This blog series explores some threats that digital technologies can create to freedom of religion or belief and other human rights. It starts with Neville Rochow’s elaboration on the potential harmfulness of algorithm-based decision-making if the program does not take account of religious beliefs. Rochow emphasizes that the predictable and (in many ways) helpful expansion of AI’s role in everyday life must be accompanied by companies’ greater corporate accountability and obedience to the law.

Yulia Razmetaeva explains why AI technology may be non-neutral and have a significant influence on freedom of thought pointing at it as a source of fake information  that calls for violence.

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