Artificial Intelligence and Religion Seminar Sessions at AAR 2019

The Artificial Intelligence and Religion Seminar has two sessions at AAR 2019 in San Diego. They are back-to-back sessions. So mark your calendar/programs:

A25-340
Artificial Intelligence and Religion Seminar Theme: Surveying the Landscape
Monday, 3:30 PM–5:00 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Aqua E (Third Level)
Randy Reed, Appalachian State University, Presiding

Joshua Urich, Trinity University-San Antonio
“He Was Only a God:” Sherlock Holmes and the Origins of an ASI Church

David Zvi Kalman, University of Pennsylvania
Artificial Intelligence and Jewish Thought: A Roadmap

Justin Hawkins, Yale University
"The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time:” Roko’s Basilisk, Antinatalism, and the Pascal ’s Wager of Creating the Singularity

Beth Singler, University of Cambridge
“Blessed by the Algorithm”: Theistic Conceptions of Artificial Intelligence as Entanglements of AI and Religion

Pamela Eisenbaum, Iliff School of Theology, and Theodore Vial, Iliff School of Theology
Autonomy, Automatons, and AI Takeshi Kimura, University of Tsukuba Artificial Other and Natural Other: When a Human Meets A.I.

A25-443
Artificial Intelligence and Religion Seminar Theme: Experiments in Artificial Intelligence and Religion
Monday, 5:30 PM–7:00 PM
Hilton Bayfront-Aqua E (Third Level)
Philip Butler, Loyola Marymount University, Presiding

F. LeRon Shults, University of Agder, and Wesley J. Wildman, Boston University
Simulating Secularities: Studying Religion and Nonreligion in Artificial Societies

Emanuelle Burton, University of Illinois, Chicago, and Thomas Arnold, Tufts University
Strangers in a Strange Land: A Field Report from Two Religion Scholars Working in AI 

Randy Reed, Appalachian State University
A.I., and Religion, A.I. in Religion, A.I. for Religion: A.I. as a Tool for Religious Studies

Nathan R. B. Loewen, University of Alabama
Analyzing Philosophy of Religion Journals via Digital Humanities: Plotting Futures for the Field

AAR Full Papers - Available Now

AAR Members -- You can read the full papers for the seminars by clicking the links below:

A25-340 - Artificial Intelligence and Religion: Surveying the Landscape

A25-443 - Experiments in Artificial Intelligence and Religion

Tenure Track Postion in Social Theory and the Digital Study of Religion

The University of Alabama has an open search for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Social Theory and the Digital Study of Religion.

https://facultyjobs.ua.edu/postings/45867

A.I. In Religious Studies: the Grundtvig Example

Justin Lane has a response to the podcast on the religious studies project page about the attempt to analyze and in some sense resurrect a Danish theologian Grundtvig through A.I. Lane argues that perhaps what A.I. could really resurrect is Religious Studies in general, noting the discrepancy between interest in A.I. and Religious Studies as charted on Google N-grams. Certainly, we applaud this impulse, and the Grundtvig project represents an interesting approach.  In 2018 I watched Mark Graves demonstrate a chatbot trained on the writings of Thomas Aquinas (in translation) that could reproduce Aquinas-like language. Though at that point the chatbot quickly degenerated into Aquinas-sounding nonsense.  Still, with the immense progress made by GPT-2, it is only a matter of time until we see more credible versions of these sorts of chatbots.