Artificial Intelligence and Spirituality

The goal of this book is to advance our understanding of how “high-stakes information”, including religious information, will be presented by AI systems and the implications to our sense of identity, how we see the world and how we treat others.To do this, it explores the potential influence of AI on the way people across multiple religious and non-religious backgrounds experience spirituality. The book explains how data was gathered through qualitative field research with participants and their interactions with AI entities on existential questions. These experiences presented religious information from various sources (e.g. insider, outsider) in a variety of media forms (e.g. search engines, SMS and web chatbots, voice assistants). The findings suggest that artificial intelligence has the potential to exercise significant influence on our spirituality, personal worldviews and interaction in society.