When: Wednesday 23 October, 12 pm
Where: DH Active Learning Space, Food Science Building 4.58

What if your Bible was an algorithm? A comparison of Artificial Intelligence and Religion

Max Darby (UCC)

Organised religions once originated as distributed, unorganised and unregulated useful practices that aided human life in some way. Over the course of time, through biological and cultural evolution, these useful practices pieced together to form highly organised systems of control and power.
Artificial intelligence (that is to say, an algorithm that completes some kind of ‘intelligent decision-making task’) appears to be at the same preliminary stage that religions once were; where it is a distributed, unorganised and unregulated collection of useful practices that aid human life in some way.
Max’s research analyses the pattern in which religious systems of control emerged and evolved, along with their features and functions, and compares them to those of artificially intelligent systems. The aim of this comparison is to explore whether artificially intelligent systems have the potential to become highly organised system of control and power, perhaps with even more influence than religions. This comparison prompts questions as to how these ‘systems of control’ may affect human experience, as decision-making is outsourced and behaviour becomes automated through an increasing reliance upon artificially intelligent systems.

About the Speaker

Max Darby received his BA in Digital Humanities and Information Technology from UCC in 2018. Max continues his research in the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, in which he compares artificial intelligence and religion in his MPhil research. Max is a data analyst and spends a large proportion of his time in industry developing machine learning models. He is a proponent of ethical artificial intelligence in industry, and has developed and published a set of internal ‘AI/Data Ethics’ guidelines within his organisation.