As with any other technology, AI comes with its challenges. The most prominent in the context of faith is likely to be misinformation and misrepresentation. We have already seen an example of this last year with the viral circulation of a deepfake image of the pope. In that instance, it was largely meant as a bit of fun.
However, with the possibility of the creation of deepfake images and voice cloning through AI costing as little as £10 (using existing online tools such as Eleven Labs and D-ID) we might not be too far from more worrying cases. Imagine extremist organizations using this technology to create propaganda videos with the faked words of religious leaders or to misrepresent religious symbols.
Similarly, language models trained on extremist views could create outputs at scale to spew venom against particular faith groups, leading to hate crimes and community tensions.
Let’s next take a futuristic vision of AI and its intersection with faith. I would like to use the example of my Hindu faith to illustrate a 50-year future vision.
A key concept of the Hindu faith is purushartha, which outlines the four aims of human life: dharma (righteousness, moral values), artha (prosperity, economic values), kama (pleasure, psychological values), and moksha (spiritual values, self-actualisation).
In the next 50–100 years, AI is likely to become a co-pilot for all human endeavours including decision-making. For maintaining righteousness or dharma in the world, the algorithm and AI language models must be trained on data that is truthful and morally right.
This won’t be guaranteed unless we build this into regulatory frameworks currently being drawn up for AI. The advancement in AI will naturally accelerate humanity’s attainment of artha, or economic prosperity, as we enter a world of abundance with multiple technological convergences.
Based on the clamor for solutions to the growing problem of societal inequality, we could see forms of universal basic income become the norm globally. This will free up a lot of time – now spent on day jobs – for humanity to take up other pursuits. This would in the first instance be more time spent on pleasure or kama activities.
With more quality time on our hands, we could even see a revival in spiritual and faith-related pursuits (moksha activities). That would be an interesting outcome of AI’s growing influence on the world.
AI could free up our time to an unprecedented degree, which will leave time for faith-based activities.
theconversation.com