When words are more than just flesh: A report on AI in religion

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As a reporter covering the technology industry, I spend a lot of time thinking about artificial intelligence.

My neighborhood in San Francisco is dotted with billboards for AI companies. I regularly talk about AI chatbots with people including company executives, friends, and family. I even tried to use an AI clone to repair my dating life.

So when I discovered a Facebook group called “AI for Church Leaders and Pastors,” my interest was piqued. On this page, I found a community of religious leaders discussing updates to AI programs such as ChatGPT and Claude. They even used image and video generators to recreate scenes from the Bible.

The similarities were interesting. For many tech enthusiasts in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, AI itself has become something of a religion. I wanted to dig deeper into how spirituality and AI are colliding in religious institutions across the country.

I scoured the internet for clergymen who were experimenting with AI to help write sermons, and called a dozen or so. I also visited several local churches, synagogues, and mosques and asked religious leaders what they thought about the use of AI in their work.

We quickly learned that AI is already a controversial topic in many religious communities. I also discovered a Bible study group made up of engineers from top AI companies that meets weekly in the basement of a church in Silicon Valley.

The religious leaders I was most interested in speaking to were those who saw AI as a dilemma. Indeed, technology may be making their jobs easier. But at what cost?

We found that most of the coverage of AI was about advances in the technology itself, such as updates to chatbots and the emerging global market for computers and the semiconductor chips that power them. But I've always been interested in reporting on other aspects of AI: how people use it, and the ethical issues that arise from automating more personal aspects of life. I did.

I felt religion was a good topic to explore in my report because the basis of most faiths is written scripture, which AI can incorporate in the same way as news articles and books. . But we also found that there are many reasons why people object to using AI in fields where human intimacy is important in many ways. How will religious leaders react when an AI sees a hallucination, a statement made up by a chatbot?

One of the most helpful conversations for me was with Jay Cooper, a pastor in Austin, Texas. He was the first of several religious leaders to pose the question, “Can God speak through AI?”

In his response, Cooper cited a passage from the Book of John in which Jesus, claiming to be king, confronts Roman officials. Jesus says to them, “Everyone who is on the side of the truth hears me,'' but the Roman official replies, “What is truth?''

On a personal level, I consider myself more “spiritual” than religious, but I'm always interested in this kind of conversation. My parents met at seminary. My mother has been a hospice chaplain for many years. I attended a Lutheran college and often went to morning chapel with friends and participated in faith discussions in my dorm room.

When reporting on a sensitive topic, it always helps to have some knowledge of the subject. During my interviews, religious leaders often asked me about my own thoughts on AI, and being able to formulate thoughtful answers was important in building trust.

This article was compiled after a Zoom interview with Rabbi Oren Hayon and Rabbi Josh Fixler in December. With the help of Muslim AI researcher Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad from the University of Washington, Rabbi Fixler created a program called “Rabbi Bot.” Rabbi Bott, trained in Rabbi Fiksler's old sermons, could write sermons in his style and even deliver them during services with an AI version of his voice.

Watching a YouTube video of a sermon given by Rabbi Bott two years ago, I was struck by the scene in which Rabbi Fixler is speaking loudly to a chatbot during a service, and to the synagogue's speakers as if it had come from heaven. I was intrigued by his energetic voice. . I knew right away that my article would get opened.

On our Zoom call, Rabbi Hayon provided some incisive analysis on how AI fits into the larger history of technological tools changing the way people worship. This includes technologies such as radio, television, and the Internet, as well as older tools dating back to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century.

When it comes to AI more generally, it's easy for people to express strong support or opposition to the technology. A reporter's job is not to take sides, but to convey information. I hope that after reading my article, readers will think more nuancedly about the idea of ​​using AI in religion and other areas of life.