AI gives us information. It furnishes facts. It prompts us with news headlines. But could AI also answer our religious questions? 

When Shanen Boettcher paused his tech career and completed a master's degree in world religions, he began to ask himself this question. Recently, he conducted a study to put it to the test. In this episode, Shanen and Gretchen discuss his findings and explore the previously widely-ignored intersection of technology and faith. They ask: Do people feel they have more privacy speaking about spirituality with AI? What kind of authority do AI-generated answers evoke? How will the religious realm, a realm of mystery and prayer, be incorporated into the factual, statistical world of technology?

4:29 - Spirituality is “how individuals make meaning of encounters in life and the information that they encounter there.

5:25 - Religion is rooted in the idea of a group, in which the group provides the structure through sacred texts, historical context, systematics, and practical theology.

5:56 - Artificial intelligence is a machine appearing to be intelligent to a human.

7:58 - Hypothesis: “AI has the potential to play a significant role in the distribution of religious information and its transformation into religious or spiritual knowledge.”

10:12 - AI could be efficacious in expanding religious knowledge.

14:28 - There is little precedent for overlap between religion and technology, as scholars in the space of human-machine communication omit research in religious information, while theological scholars exclude the realm of AI in their research.

16:43 - The four voices of theological reflection, Normative, Formal, Espoused and Operant, might be succeeded by a fifth voice of religious information, technology or AI.

24:38 - Boettcher’s study interrogated how participants responded to different presentations of AI, as well as how they were impacted when they received answers that didn’t correspond with their religious experience.

29:25 - Participants anthropomorphized the technological experience out of their strong desire to make meaning. 

32:19 - Some religious information triggered memories, which led the participants to become more emotional and open. 

33:39 - Participants preferred demure female voices as opposed to male voices, which sounded too dictatorial. In a seemingly conflicting way, people had a strong deference to the information they received from AI.

38:13 - People experience a feeling of privacy with AI because they feel that a machine won’t judge them or evoke the discomfort they might feel in an interaction with a person. There is also a metaphysical aspect to machines; they can feel like an extension of the person himself. This creates important potential for accessing people or for manipulating them.

42:31 - Because AI can and does influence society, religious leaders should ask themselves, “What are we doing? How are our beliefs showing up in this realm? And what experiences could we provide as well?”

46:20 - Asking technology religious questions has less limits than personal encounters, which can lead people to get deeper in their search for answers.

47:41 - AI-generated answers, by lacking sources and links, feel more authoritative. This evokes an aura of objectivity and an attitude of deference toward the answer.

49:00 - With the advent of technology, our habit of prayer, or asking God questions and accepting mystery, is replaced by needing efficiency, factual answers and control.

51:17 - The phone was the device that most easily provided a familiar and constant encounter with AI, as opposed to a computer, which feels like a productivity device.

55:29 - Book recommendations

58:33 - “AI and the companies that make it… know everything about us and they might use it for ill. God knows everything about us and he loves us.”

Beatrice Institute is supported in part by Henne Jewelers and The Pittsburgh Foundation.