Události

Inken Prohl - Religion and Artificial Intelligence: Perspectives from Religious Studies

V rámci mezinárodního projektu 4EU+ "Bible and Europe in the Changing World" prosloví prof. Dr. Inken Prohl z Univerzity v Heidelbergu přednášku "Religion and Artificial Intelligence - Perspectives from Religious Studies". Přednáška proběhne ve středu 25. října 2023 ve 14:30 v učebně L203.

Prof. Dr. Inken Prohl vystudovala japanologii a religionistiku na Svobodné univerzitě Berlín a na Univerzitě v Tokiu. Od roku 2006 je profesorkou religionistiky na Univerzitě v Heidelbergu. K jejím předním výzkumným zájmům patří buddhismus a náboženství a umělá insteligence.

Studie z poslední doby:

• 2023. „Buddhist Practice, Recreation, and Fun: Entanglements of Popular Culture and Material Religion“. In The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion, herausgegeben von Pooyan Tamimi Arab, Jennifer Scheper Hughes, und S. Brent Rodríguez-Plate. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.

• 2023. „Über Religion und Religionen forschen - raus aus der Kampfzone!“ In Probleme der Streitkultur in Demokratie und Wissenschaft, 165–86. Verlag Karl Alber, 2023.

• 2021. „Review. Behold the Buddha: Religious Meanings of Japanese Buddhist Icons by James C. Dobbins“. Reading Religion. A Publication of the American Academy of Religion. https://readingreligion.org/books/behold-buddha.

Podcast:

„Der selbstgemachte Buddha“

Anotace přednášky:

Religion and Artificial Intelligence - Perspectives from Religious Studies

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have a transformative impact on religion. First, AI transforms religious institutions, movements, discourses, practices, and agents. Second, the applications and discourses of AI challenge religiously and culturally conditioned notions about what it means to be human and ignite theological processes of self-understanding.

Adding to these inquiries about AI and religion, my talk will examine the dynamics, functions, and materialities of AI as religion. As my paper intends to demonstrate, AI's discourses, practices, and materialities constitute a formation analogous to religion. Following the theories of material religion, religions can be understood as technologies of sensation that offer embodied means of salvation, thereby mediating world views, values, and orientation. A textual and material analysis of writings on algorithms and the presentation of them in books, on webpages, and in museums will show that AI continues the workings of religion.

This analysis needs to draw out the particularities of the rhetoric surrounding algorithms. Key terms, such as „salvation,“ „future,“ „inevitability,“ and „truth, “ shape the discourses in no small part. The Futurium in Berlin will serve as one of several examples of materialities around algorithms and how they are used to inscribe this rhetoric into the body.

Since religious teachings and practices mediate particular worldviews, AI and the theology around algorithms, by extension, must be questioned on their presumptions and the values they purport. My paper will discuss the problems to which the discourses around algorithms claim to have answers and the possible applications they suggest. The particular focus here will be on the relevance of these claims from the perspective of post-feminist theory and the politics of care and their impact on everyday life. We will seek answers to the following questions: Which conclusions can we draw if discourses around AI and algorithms are understood as formations analogous to religion? What does this mean for their relevance in society? My conclusion will answer this and provide some theses on the meaning of AI as a post-secular religion.