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podcasts. AI and Religion. There's more overlap than you might think. From American public media,

this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Lily Jamali.

Artificial Intelligence. It can all feel so abstract and so we've come to depend on certain

narratives to try and make sense of it all. In case you had it noticed, some of the language we

use to describe AI and our interactions with it is rooted in religious ideas. Bracing for the

apocalypse, have you been blessed by the algorithm or consulted with a robo rabbi lately?

The deification of AI, whether it's done consciously or not, is something Beth Singler has

made a career of studying. She's a professor of digital religions at the University of Zurich in

Switzerland. She says religious thinking about technology might just be us projecting.

The kind of existential fears that people have about the development of AI, where it's going,

where it might go out of control in particular ways. Those sorts of ideas, those imaginaries,

they replicate sometimes religious narratives and tropes. We've already seen

quite mainstream articles talking about the dangers of God-like AI. Figures like Elon Musk talk

about with AI, we're really summoning the demon. There's this thing that could get out of control

and the language that's used, holes on those existing religious ideas. Quite often, the monotheistic

ones, the ones we're familiar with from Christianity or Islam or Judaism, the idea of a singular,

powerful entity that is in some ways omniscience, omnipotence, and we kind of hope maybe omnipinevolence

as well, but there's a lot of conversation about how we make AI to be good to share our values,

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