AI, Cyborgs, Robots and Religion II

Abstract

Eurocentric theories of humans and societies that inform the design of AI/ML systems, cybernetic organisms, and robotics, often draw upon religiously-rooted universalizing norms and assumptions. Scholarly work has examined the ethics and potential impacts of AI, Cyborgs, and Robots on society, but less has been done to examine the assumptions of world religions that inform such innovations and whether such assumptions lead to outcomes that promote human flourishing or not. This panel explores the influences of religious paradigms of the human and religious visions of the future on the design and use of intelligent technologies.

This panel includes papers examining religious aspects of AI, Cyborgs, and Robots broadly construed and imagined, as well as the social and ethical implications and paradigms for understanding how these technologies reconfigure assemblages of humans and more-than-humans (and design and create new ones).

Individual Presentations

• The Religion of Technology at the Grassroots - Jacob Boss

• Mechanisms of Becoming: A Discussion of the Magico-Religious Valences of Machine Intelligence and Technology - Damien Patrick Williams, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Discussant

• Tristan Gohring, Indiana University - Bloomington

Chair

• William Barylo, University of Warwick, UK

Session Organizer

• W.E. King, University of Washington