Belief in the Future

Afleveringen

1. Evangelicals are rejecting AI personhood

   23 oktober 2026 · 52 min

   Afspelen
   Earlier this month, the National Association of Evangelicals released a resolution on artificial intelligence. It's short, and compared to Pope Leo's encyclical, it is somewhat more pointed—especially with regard to AI having a soul or personhood. Lees meer

   On this episode, I spoke with Walter Kim, the president of the NAE, about how the resolution came together.

   Text: https://www.nae.org/artificial-intelligence/
   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2. Teaching priests how to fix AI

   9 oktober 2026 · 47 min

   Afspelen
   If you want to have an impact in the world of AI, you need to speak the language of code. That's getting easier, but it's still not easy. And it puts religious leaders at a disadvantage. Lees meer

   But what if you taught religious leaders how to speak this language? That's the subject of this episode with Nina Lutz.
   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

3. Is it better to love a cat or a robot? (w/ Dustin Atlas)

   24 september 2026 · 47 min

   Afspelen
   When we talk about relationships with AI, we often focus on whether these machines are alive or sentient. But life and sentience aren't necessary for relationships; in fact, we often have deep relationships with objects and animals—and we often treat people like objects, too. Lees meer

   There is a theory of relationship that understands this, and it's the one proposed by Martin Buber, author of "I and Thou" and many other works.

   In this episode we speak with Dustin Atlas about Buber and AI, author of the book How to Talk to a Cat: Buber, Philosophy, and Dialogue with Unspeaking Things.
   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

4. Is AI leapfrogging women in religious leadership?

   3 september 2026 · 50 min

   Afspelen
   AI conversations have a tendency to become so big that you can't really locate yourself within them. For this episode we're flipping the script and talking about a longstanding conversation into which AI has unexpectedly intruded: women's religious leadership. Lees meer

   Sara Wolkenfeld is Chief Learning Officer at Sefaria. She joins the podcast to discuss her recent article.
   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

5. AI and Fear of Death

   21 augustus 2026 · 44 min

   Afspelen
   How does our inevitable deaths change how we live—and how does fear of loss change how we develop technology? Alex Sarkissian is a death doula and a co-founder of the Buddhism and AI Initiative; he joins us to discuss his recent article on AI and Dying.
   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Lees meer

6. AI loves Catholicism. Why? (w/ David Wingate)

   6 augustus 2026 · 44 min

   Afspelen
   How does AI portray religion? Does it talk about it in the way that most Americans do? Does it treat all religions the same? Lees meer

   CEFE-AI (https://cefe.ai/) is a multi-university consortium that has been trying to answer these questions. For the last few months it has been developing benchmarks on how AI models treat faith, and the results are surprising. On this episode we talk with David Wingate, professor at BYU and academic lead for CEFE-AI, about the group's work.
   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

7. Faith and the Printing Press (w/ Michelle Margolis)

   24 juli 2026 · 38 min

   Afspelen
   Yes, AI is new and unique—but we've been through an information revolution before. The printing press transformed religion, authority, and public life. Those upheavals offer insights into the age of AI. Lees meer

   Michelle Margolis is the Norman E. Alexander librarian for Jewish studies at Columbia University, and she's the past president of the Association of Jewish Libraries. From censorship and misinformation to expertise and trust, we explore why history still matters when technology changes everything.
   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8. A next-gen religious chatbot (w/ Zohar Atkins)

   3 juli 2026 · 56 min

   Afspelen
   The market in religious chatbots is now quite healthy. If you’re Episcopalian you can go to Ask Cathy; if you’re Catholic there’s Magisterium; if you’re a Latter-day Saint there’s LDSBot; if you’re Muslim there’s Ansari; and if you’re Jewish you can go to Rav Dicta, or one of the services that lets you talk to the avatars of famous historical rabbis. Lees meer

   Zohar Atkins is the creator of Yochai, a chatbot designed for engaging with Jewish texts, rather than just getting answers to Jewish questions. We demoed the newly-launched product and talk about how AI might change Jewish learning.
   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

9. Islam and AI (w/ Waleed Kadous)

   26 juni 2026 · 47 min

   Afspelen
   As a decentralized faith, Islam does not have one single approach to AI. Muslim communities are constructing norms around AI usage in religious scholarship and sermon-writing through a mix of guidance from religious leaders and emergent communal practice. I talked to Waleed Kadous, the creator of Islamic AI assistant Ansari, about how the technology is shaping not only Islamic scholarship but our value systems and real world politics.
   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Lees meer

10. The Image of God in the Age of AI (w/ Tomer Persico)

    18 juni 2026 · 52 min

    Afspelen
    The idea that human beings are created in the image of God is a central part of both Jewish and Christian theology, and with the rise of AI it has become perhaps the best example of how ancient religious wisdom can regulate modern technology by reminding us of what we value most of all. If human beings are created in the image of God—if we have something in us that separates us from animals—then we have an idea to rally around, a way to articulate that humanity’s special status needs to be preserved at all cost. Lees meer

    The problem is, this theological idea is a lot more unstable than we’d like to admit. I talk to Tomer Persico, research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of In God's Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea.
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alle 30 afleveringen →