Belief in the Future

Yes, AI is new and unique—but we've been through an information revolution before. The printing press transformed religion, authority, and public life. Those upheavals offer insights into the age of AI.

Michelle Margolis is the Norman E. Alexander librarian for Jewish studies at Columbia University, and she's the past president of the Association of Jewish Libraries. From censorship and misinformation to expertise and trust, we explore why history still matters when technology changes everything.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The market in religious chatbots is now quite healthy. If you’re Episcopalian you can go to Ask Cathy; if you’re Catholic there’s Magisterium; if you’re a Latter-day Saint there’s LDSBot; if you’re Muslim there’s Ansari; and if you’re Jewish you can go to Rav Dicta, or one of the services that lets you talk to the avatars of famous historical rabbis.

Zohar Atkins is the creator of Yochai, a chatbot designed for engaging with Jewish texts, rather than just getting answers to Jewish questions. We demoed the newly-launched product and talk about how AI might change Jewish learning.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a decentralized faith, Islam does not have one single approach to AI. Muslim communities are constructing norms around AI usage in religious scholarship and sermon-writing through a mix of guidance from religious leaders and emergent communal practice. I talked to Waleed Kadous, the creator of Islamic AI assistant Ansari, about how the technology is shaping not only Islamic scholarship but our value systems and real world politics.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The idea that human beings are created in the image of God is a central part of both Jewish and Christian theology, and with the rise of AI it has become perhaps the best example of how ancient religious wisdom can regulate modern technology by reminding us of what we value most of all. If human beings are created in the image of God—if we have something in us that separates us from animals—then we have an idea to rally around, a way to articulate that humanity’s special status needs to be preserved at all cost.

The problem is, this theological idea is a lot more unstable than we’d like to admit. I talk to Tomer Persico, research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of In God's Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is more than one type of religious approach to AI. While the Catholic response has received by far the most media attention, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has been developing a response that has a stronger emphasis on practice. I spoke with Elder Gerrit Gong, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, about the church's approach.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices