The influence of secular thinking in our global society is powerful enough to make a project like a “theology of Artificial Intelligence” appear to be a doomed enterprise or a contradiction in terms at best, and sheer nonsense at worst. Is there a theology of the microchip? The integrated circuit? The Boolean gates? And even if one happened to think that God is closer to software than hardware – is there a theology of AI or machine learning?
Put so plainly and abruptly, these questions can easily lead to the conclusion that such a theology is impossible to make sense of. Just as a secular opinion (surreptitiously powerful even among adherents of religions) often hastens to declare that “religion and science simply cannot go together”, the same would be assumed about theology and modern technology – it is like yoking a turtle and a jaguar together.
Moreover, if one approached the incongruence between “theology” and “artificial intelligence” by transposing it to the field of anthropology, one would again face the same problem on another plane. What does a human being practicing religion – a homo religiosus – have to do with a human being – perhaps the very same human being – as a user of artificial intelligence? Is it not the case that historical progress has by our days left behind not only the relevance of religion but also the very humanism that used to enshrine the same human being in question as sacred? Is secular humanism in our day not giving way to things like the “transhuman” and the “posthuman”?
YouTube Liturgies
But this secular-historical argument is not difficult to turn upside down. When it comes to human history, it is the nature of the things of the past that they are still with us and, what is more, religious forms of consciousness that many would deem atavistic today not only stay present but can also come across with new vigor in the contemporary digital environment. They might strike many as hybrid forms of consciousness, in which the day before yesterday stages an intense and perplexing comeback.
Take the example of Christian devotion in an online environment like YouTube. Assisted, surrounded, and finally motivated by the artificial intelligence of YouTube, a Christian believer will soon find herself in the intensifying bubble of her own religious fervor. Her worship of Jesus Christ in watching devotional videos is quickly and easily perceived by YouTube’s algorithms which will soon offer her historical documentaries, testimonies, Christian talk shows, subscriptions to Christian channels, and the like. In the wake of this spiraling movement, her religious consciousness will be very different and, in a sense, more intense than that of a premodern devotee of Christ – a consciousness steeped in a medium orchestrated by artificial intelligence.
It follows from the pervasive presence of artificial intelligence in today’s society in general and in what we call “new media” in particular that, the same way as any other kind of content, any positive religious content may also invite an inquiry into the nature of AI. But a note of caution is in order here. The terms “religious” and “religion” in this context must include much more than the semantics of mainstream religious traditions like Christianity.
An online religious attitude includes much more than any cult of personality and may extend to the whole of online existence.
For instance, the above example of artificial intelligence orchestrating Christian experience, after all, is perfectly applicable to any online cult of personality. A teenager worshipping Billie Eilish will experience something very similar to Christian worship on YouTube whose algorithms do not make any methodical distinction between a pop singer and a Messiah.
Online Worship and Techno-Totalitarianism
In a theology of AI what really matters online is not positive religious content but a certain religious attitude intensified and eventually motivated by Artificial Intelligence. An online religious attitude includes much more than any cult of personality and may extend to the whole of online existence. As researchers of contemporary cultural anthropology and sociology of religion have pointed out, many users of digital technology find a “higher life” and a “more authentic self” online, at the same time as experiencing a mystical fusion with the entirety of the global digital cloud.[1] The relocation of the sacred and the godlike in the realm of the digital is as obvious here as the influence of a technological version of New Age spirituality which is often called “New Edge” by researchers and devotees alike.
This “techno-religion” is fully subservient to what can be termed techno-totalitarianism. The digital technology and environment of our times perfectly fit the definition of totalitarianism: it pervades and knits tightly together all aspects of society while enabling the full subjugation of the individual to a ubiquitous and anonymous power. The totalitarian and curiously religious presence of the secular, “neutral” and functional algorithms of artificial intelligence evokes both a religious past and a religious future.
Algorithmic Determinism
This is another example of the historical dialectic between religion and secularisation. The secular probability theory underpinning these secular algorithms (and predicting the online behavior of users) has roots in the Early Modern statistical theory of prediction modeled on the idea of God’s predestination.[2] Ironically, the idea of divine predestination is making a gruesome return in contemporary times as the increasing bulk of big data at the disposal of AI algorithms means more and more certainty about user behavior and, as a consequence, increasingly precise prediction for and automation of the human future. It is, therefore, safe to say that there can indeed be such a thing as a theology of AI and machine learning.
The division between those who are elected and those who are not, increasingly defines various sectors of contemporary information society such as the financial market. The simple truth of a formula like “the rich get richer, the poor poorer” has deep roots in the reality of inscrutably complex AI algorithms running in the financial sector that determine not only trade on Wall Street but also the success or failure of many millions of small cases like individual credit applications.
Algorithms decide on who obtains credit and at what interest rate. The more data about individual applicants they have at their disposal, the more accurately they can predict their future financial behavior.[3] Like in many other fields defined by AI, it is not difficult to recognize here how prediction slips into modification and modification into techno-determinism which seals the fate of the world’s population. Indeed, this immense power over individuals, holding their past, present, and future with iron clips together, is nothing short of a force for a new religious realm and a wake-up call to Christian theology from its dogmatic slumber.
Conclusion
It is clear that if there is a positive theology of artificial intelligence as such it must go far beyond an analysis of explicit, positive “religious content” in today’s online environment. If so, one question certainly remains which is impossible to answer within the confines of this blogpost: what would a negative theology of AI look like, a theology in which an engagement with AI would go hand in hand with a distance from and criticism of it?
[1] cf. Stef Aupers & Dick Houtman (eds.), Religions of Modernity: Relocating the Sacred to the Self and the Digital (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2010).
[2] This idea is spelled out in Virgil W. Brower, “Genealogy of Algorithms: Datafication as Transvaluation”, Le foucaldien 6, no. 1 (2020): 11, 1-43.
[3] This is one of the main arguments in Cathy O’Neill, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (New York: Crown, 2016).
Gábor L. Ambrus holds a post-doctoral research position in the Theology and Contemporary Culture Research Group at The Charles University, Prague. He is also a part-time research fellow at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome. He is currently working on a book on theology, social media, and information technology. His research primarily aims at a dialogue between the Judaeo-Christian tradition and contemporary techno-scientific civilization.