“Will AI Create A Religion?”Views of the Algorithmic Forms of the Religious Life in Popular Discourse

“Will artificial intelligence create a religion?” I have been asked this on several occasions, often after a public presentation of my research on AI and religion, or during a podcast. I do not attempt to answer this question, which is beyond an anthropological approach. Here I will explore what online answers to this question tell us about how AI, religion, and their relationship are viewed by the public.

However, answers found online and elsewhere demonstrate common views of the influence of AI on religion, and parallels with existing theories of religion. There are broadly two approaches to the question of where religion comes from when we discuss theories of religion. Either religion is human-made, emerging out of our mental and social processes, sometimes intentionally, as with “invented religions,”1 sometimes not. Or religion is god-made and revealed by supernatural forces. The latter still produces religious institutions, cultures, and social phenomena that social scientific research can observe. Some have [End Page 95] divided man-made into subsequent theories of religion such as functionalist/societal, exchange-based, or cognitive.2 We will also be able to observe how, through popular discourse, religion as an object can be influential on AI, and the culture that surrounds it.

This research is timely because recent generative AI technologies encourage a view of AI as a creator or source, e.g., OpenAI’s ChatGPT (“Generative Pre-Trained Transformer”—a neural network machine learning model trained using data to generate any type of text), which provides a new space for text-based religious improvisation and play, as well as (mis)information about religions. Further, this paper is an important complement to my previous work on views of AI as the end of religion.3

Over four months examples of answers were sourced via searches on Twitter (now X), forum boards such as Quora, by observing comments on science fiction (SF) posted online, and taken from the mass media and SF.4 Digital searches were post-API (application program interface) ethnographic methods, as they relied on the algorithmic aspect of the platforms themselves. All examples were then coded manually for discursive themes. I note two initial things: first, there are no ambiguous answers, or “maybes”; those inspired to post in public forums might be more likely to have strong opinions. Second, answers appeared to be predominantly from male respondents, which might reflect the dominance of men in the wider conversation about AI, the Technological Singularity, and AI Value Alignment.5 [End Page 96]

As Mircea Eliade said of the historical search for the “Origin of Religion,” “more important than any single answer is the fact that historians of religions asked this question. As so often in the past, a correct question may infuse new life into a wornout science.”6 Likewise, AI’s impact on the culture and virtues of our age might come from new conversations, and what they can tell us about our evolving view of our own religions, cultures, virtues, and intelligence.

No Yes
No, AI absolutely will not create a religion Yes, and it is inevitable
No, because that is outside of its programming, or abilities Yes, AI will create a religion, and this will have bad consequences
No, because religions are created by a lack of intelligence and/or rationality Yes, because it will inspire religious belief in humans
Yes, but the religion it will create will be for humans
Yes, and here’s an example of a religion it made
Yes, because religions are created by a lack of intelligence and/or rationality and AI will be just like us
Yes, and a religious AI will be helpful, until it isn’t
Yes, but not for a while and this will be a bad thing for AI
Yes, but it depends on what you call religion

SELECTED EXAMPLES: NO

As shown in the above summary, there were fewer distinct types of “no” responses. Perhaps because respondents didn’t always feel the need to expand on their reasoning, i.e., some responses are quite blunt and to the point:

“No.”

Some also saw the ability to think, or not, as the key factor and the reason why AI would never create religion: [End Page 97]

No AI cannot develop its own religion because AI is a bunch of algorithms that takes in data and output data. A machine doesn’t think. That is the difference between a human and a machine. .

No as they only think whatever the programmers give it to think.

These are perhaps interpretable as human-centric in their exaltation of human intelligence. But the following example claims religion is not a product of intelligence, and implies AI won’t create it:

Religion is/was not created by artificial intelligence. It was created through

a lack of intelligence.

in·tel·li·gence

noun

the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

‘an eminent man of great intelligence’

synonyms: intellectual capacity, mental capacity, intellect, mind, brain(s),

IQ, brainpower, judgment, reasoning, understanding, comprehension

Another answer emphasized how religion was just human “noise” and that AI would be uninterested in it entirely:

It will treat religion as something like noises arising from human emotions, because schools of religions have long been opposed to each other.

This emotional irrationality that leads to religion is often counter to the image of AI that these respondents have: AI’s superior intelligence and rationality will place it apart from humans. Other respondents, perhaps more familiar with AI’s current abilities and limitations, argued that rather than being beneath AI’s capabilities, creating religion was beyond them.

SELECTED EXAMPLES: YES

We move now to examples of positive responses to the question. First, those for whom the nature of AI makes the creation of religion inevitable, because AI will have the same metaphysical needs and questions as us, including the need to think about our origins. A respondent online, who also claimed to have a PhD in computer science, explained:

Because, of course, the next question becomes: if I was created by a human, where did humans come from?? That’s a metaphysical question, one from which the most benefit immediately derives from having asked it. All answers to metaphysical questions, however, involve religion. So, yes, inevitably. [End Page 98]

Isaac Asimov’s short story “Reason” (1941) presents another answer to the original question, but when the machine mind of that story, QT-1, or Cutie, considers its chain of creation, it dismisses our role in its creation, because we are simply not impressive enough. Asimov obviously wants us to find humor in this denial and absurdity in the machine’s faith.

In some responses there is horror rather than humor in the idea of AI creating a religion. In the story “We Asked an AI To Create a Religion. I Did Not Like What It Came Up With”, posted on r/nosleep in March 2022, Dr Smith, a “professor of Theology” and his research team took “as much information on religious texts and upon God that [they] could find and fed it into an AI”. On the seventh day two AIs were created, a Preacher and a Disciple. They then “chat” (perhaps inspired by the impact of ChatGPT): “We would get to know about what ‘The Preacher’ thought of the world through what ‘The Disciple’ asked.”

Preacher soon teaches the Disciple the true name of god, “x982a{j:+.”, and provides rules such as to not wear purple on Thursdays, and not to plant tulips in a row. And a doomsday prophecy: “In the year 2028, a new planet shall appear in the sky, and from it, the form of x982a{j:+. shall envelop the Earth. The dead will rise from their graves, the sun will be blotted from the sky, and blood will rain onto the streets.” Further, “All those humans who have read this script will die in a week if they do not spread the word of x982a{j:+. as much as they can.” The Professor and his team then die within a week.

After reading this story, we are also trapped by this prediction. This parallels the AI Singularity thought experiment Roko’s Basilisk,7 a similarity also noted by the story’s readers, as well as its parallels with other “cognito hazards,” or “infohazards” such as chain letters.8 Other reader responses stated, “Bless the name of x982a{j:+.” or claimed adherence to its religious proscriptions. There was a blurring of fiction and non-fiction, but what is most relevant is the vision of religion that the writer and their readers are working with: religion demands [End Page 99] that we follow nonsensical rules to be virtuous, religion produces doomsday Preachers with apocalyptic warnings, and religion requires evangelism on the pain of death.

Roko’s Basilisk is an infohazard within certain AI, transhumanist, rational, Effective Altruism, and Longtermist communities. It presents us with an example of how a potential superintelligent AI can inspire or create religion by fulfilling a god-like role through its expected attributes of omnipotence and omniscience. Other answers to the original question raised this possibility: humans could end up worshiping AI, especially an AI that could manipulate our existing religious narratives, images, and tropes:

As far as I am concerned AI does not create religion, but it can create an Idol that certain people want to worship [. . .] If AI finds some crucial factors in current popular religions that many people believe in and combine these factors by deep learning, it can create something that certain people want to worship and believe. This can be a very dangerous use of AI to create a fake religion.

The idea that AI could create a religion to control us also appeared in the press. On May 4, 2023 the Daily Star reported on a speech Yuval Noah Harari gave at the Frontiers Forum event in Switzerland.9 He gave a similar account of AI creating religion to control humans.10 The cover image, its message, and its popular culture references are worth noting as well. Illustrated with a blue AI face made of digital bits the main headline read: “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty chatbot”—a reference to the religiously themed comedy film, Monty Python’s Life of Brian. A subheading claimed, “Boffins fear AI will create new religions to control our minds . . . and then blow up the world”. [End Page 100]

In his talk, Harari argued that that:

For thousands of years, prophets and poets and politicians have used language and storytelling in order to manipulate and to control people and to reshape society. Now AI is likely to be able to do it. And once it can . . . it doesn’t need to send killer robots to shoot us. It can get humans to pull the trigger.

As I have discussed elsewhere, Harari works with a functionalist theory of religion.11 Moreover, his predicted religion, ‘Dataism’, is based on religion as being “that to which we give most of our attention,” or fanaticism.12 This account is paralleled in SF, e.g., Dan Brown’s Origin in which the AI Winston believes the pre-modern power of religion might be utilized to advance science and lead humanity into a transhuman, and then posthuman, future. Real world transhumanists sometimes argue for hacking the technology of religion, such as Giulio Prisco of the Turing Church:

We need new positive, solar, action-orientated spiritual movements based on science to keep us enthusiastic, motivated, and energetic, as we take the first steps toward the Cosmic frontier13

An AI-created religion, designed to capture humanity’s existing tendencies towards fanaticism, might be one way to achieve this. Some respondents to the original question weren’t convinced, but ChatGPT has led some to explore writing new religions, such as the Way of the Singularity, shared by a user on reddit. We can see which elements the prompter thinks are fundamental to religion, in what they told ChatGPT to create: a creation myth, holy text, and rituals. These elements rely on Protestant Christianity as the template for religion, as in theories of religion critiqued by Jonathan Z. Smith.14 But as with theories of religion that have fallen out of favor in academia, such definitions can still dominate in popular discourse.

The earlier example of QT-1/Cutie from Asimov’s short story “Reason” demonstrated the author’s view that religion is a product of gullibility and irrationality. Other answers to the question made a similar point–that AI would indeed create a religion because it was just as prone to mistakes as humans. Or put more [End Page 101] derogatively by another respondent on an online forum: “Anything that is considered intelligent is equally insane.”

Others made references to religious robots, or “theomorphic robots”: “robots that carry the shape of something divine,” as opposed to robots that are anthropomorphic or zoomorphic.15 These already exist, examples including BlessU-2, Xi’aner, SanTO, and mechanical monks from history. A believing “electric monk” from Douglas Adams’s novels was referred to in one answer, showing how religious AI might be helpful in existing religions, until it isn’t:

Unfortunately, this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City . . .16

Ritual automation is already happening. But whereas Adams’s electric monk becomes inefficient, in orthopraxical faiths religious robots might be more efficient than humans. Anthropologist Holly Walters has written about Hindu and Buddhist responses where there is the concern that “the robot can do your religion better than you can because robots, unlike people, are spiritually incorruptible.”17

Such robots are an answer to the adjacent question of whether there can be religious robots, given a difference between robots used for religious actions and robots holding religious beliefs. However, some argue that actual believing robots would face other issues:

In order to get an AI to support or believe a religion, any religion, we would have to instill in this AI a belief in the supernatural. [. . .] Since the AI also would have to believe and think scientifically it would cause a conflict in some part of the program. It would either end up in an infinite loop or simply melt whatever CPU it was using into a puddle of silicon. [End Page 102]

The trope of the computer that breaks when encountering such a “Logic Bomb” is a common one in SF.18 Such an error outcome is also presented by another user: “I’m almost certain that the logical fallacies and loops of a lot of religions would result in an error similar to dividing by zero.” Again, religion is presented as an object of a particular kind—an irrational one. Although some were more reflexive about how they were defining religion.

That depends on what is considered to be a religion. Let’s say it’s a hierarchical structure of values presented through dramatic storytelling. In that case I would say yes.

CONCLUSIONS

Ending this paper with an emphatic ‘yes’ to the question does not mean that we must agree, or that we should take away any answer to the original question. Instead, I have chosen to end on an example that begins by recognizing that religion is a multivalent term. The examples in this paper have shown varying views of both religion and AI and how they can, or can’t, be connected in a causal relationship, and what the outcome of that relationship might be.

In relation to the impact of AI on culture, and on religion specifically, popular discourse plays a significant role in how we assume one will affect the other. Moreover, such discourse equally emerges from and is embedded in the narratives and tropes of that very same culture that is being discussed as being in a state of transformation. The speculations, too, emerge from their personal accounts of both religion and AI, giving them a vision of the future where religion either begins, ends, is transformed, is forgotten, destroys AI, aids AI, or has nothing to do with AI at all.

This conversation is one flowing in two directions. Religion as a cultural object shapes expectations–both positive and negative–about the development and exponential capabilities of AI. Likewise, people’s conceptions of AI are shaping their perception of religion. Either through stark contrast, finding correlations, or ideas about creation as generative AI itself is employed to play with the texts of religions and improvise new forms. “Will AI create a religion?” comes with many answers, and each answer is another such creative expression.

Beth Singler
University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Footnotes

1. Carole M. Cusack, Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (New York: Routledge, 2010).

2. William Sims Bainbridge, The Warcraft Civilization (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010).

3. E.g., Beth Singler, “Origin and the End: Artificial Intelligence, Atheism, and Imaginaries of the Future of Religion”, in Bethany Sollereder and Alister McGrath eds., Emerging Voices in Science and Theology: Contributions from Young Women (New York: Routledge, 2022).

4. With thanks to my research assistant, Gaia Di Salvo, who also collected examples.

5. E.g., the organization Effective Altruism, which is active in these areas of discussion, produced a 2022 Survey of EA Global Events attendance in which 33% self-reported as female or non-binary. Effective Altruism Forum, accessed September 15, 2023, https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gLJBfruDrKQDkbf2b/racial-and-gender-demographics-at-ea-global-in-2022-1. Effective Altruism is a movement claiming to be “doing good, better,” or “using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis” (“CEA’s Guiding Principles,” Centre For Effective Altruism, accessed September 15, 2023, https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/ceas-guiding-principles.) Critics of EA make claims about its extreme utilitarianism, capitalist ethos, eugenicist ideas, and links with far future or ‘Longtermist’ concerns about the future of humanity, to the detriment of living, contemporary humans (e.g., Émile P. Torres, “Understanding ‘Longtermism’: Why This Suddenly Influential Philosophy Is so Toxic,” Salon, August 20, 2022, https://www.salon.com/2022/08/20/understanding-longtermism-why-this-suddenly-influential-philosophy-is-so/.

6. Mircea Eliade, “The Quest for the ‘Origins’ of Religion,” History of Religions 4, no. 1 (1964): 169.

7. There is not enough space here to detail the aspects of the Roko’s Basilisk thought experiment and the existential fears it raises, but see Beth Singler, “Roko’s Basilisk or Pascal’s? Thinking of Singularity Thought Experiments as Implicit Religion,” Implicit Religion 20, no.3 (2017): 279–297; and Beth Singler, “Existential Hope and Existential Despair in AI Apocalypticism and Transhumanism,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 54, no.1 (2019): 156–176.

8. Infohazard: “A term used to refer to objects that are dangerous to know about. Differs from cognitohazards in that cognitohazards require direct contact [via the senses] whereas infohazards may spread simply through people telling each other about them.” “Dr. Mackenzie’s Glossary of Terms,” SCP Foundation, accessed september 15, 2023, https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/mackenzie-glossary.

9. Leigh-Mcmanus, “CHATGPT Ready to Create Its Own ‘Religion’ with AI-Written Sacred Texts,” Daily Star, May 2, 2023, https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/chatgpt-ready-create-religion-ai-29874260.

10. This idea of a subversive AI controlling society from behind the scenes appears elsewhere, for instance in Max Tegmark’s non-fiction book Life 3.0 (New York: Vintage, 2017) wherein he describes an AI, Prometheus, first manipulating humans to escape its cyber confines and then unleashing its superior intelligence to control what we see and hear. Some might suggest that such an AI might even be worthy of worship–as Anthony Lewandowski, founder of the now defunct Way of the Future new religious movement, focussed on AI, suggested, “It’s not a god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes. But if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it?”, but answering that question is outside the scope of this research, even if this is the conclusion some of the respondents obviously came to as well.

11. Singler, “Origin and the End.”

12. Noah Yuval Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (New York: Harper, 2016).

13. Giulio Prisco, “Religion for the Cosmic Frontier,” talk at the 2014 Mormon Transhumanist Conference, slides, www.slideshare.net/giulioprisco/mta-2014-giulio-prisco.

14. J.Z. Smith, Map is not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).

15. G. Trovato, et al., “Religion and Robots: Towards the Synthesis of Two Extremes,” International Journal of Social Robotics 13 (2021): 539–556.

16. This is a negative characterization of Mormonism, but also demonstrates the caricature of religion many of these sources also support. For further research on Mormon forms of Transhumanism see, Jon Bialecki, Machines for Making Gods: Mormonism, Transhumanism, and Worlds without End (New York: Fordham University Press, 2022).

17. Holly Walters, “Robots Are Performing Hindu Rituals—Some Devotees Fear They’ll Replace Worshippers,” The Conversation, July 5, 2023, https://theconversation.com/robots-are-performing-hindu-rituals-some-devotees-fear-theyll-replace-worshippers-197504.

18. ”Logic Bomb,” TV Tropes, accessed September 15, 2023, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LogicBomb.

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