Belief in the Future

When we talk about relationships with AI, we often focus on whether these machines are alive or sentient. But life and sentience aren't necessary for relationships; in fact, we often have deep relationships with objects and animals—and we often treat people like objects, too.

There is a theory of relationship that understands this, and it's the one proposed by Martin Buber, author of "I and Thou" and many other works.

In this episode we speak with Dustin Atlas about Buber and AI, author of the book How to Talk to a Cat: Buber, Philosophy, and Dialogue with Unspeaking Things.

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AI conversations have a tendency to become so big that you can't really locate yourself within them. For this episode we're flipping the script and talking about a longstanding conversation into which AI has unexpectedly intruded: women's religious leadership.

Sara Wolkenfeld is Chief Learning Officer at Sefaria. She joins the podcast to discuss her recent article.

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How does our inevitable deaths change how we live—and how does fear of loss change how we develop technology? Alex Sarkissian is a death doula and a co-founder of the Buddhism and AI Initiative; he joins us to discuss his recent article on AI and Dying.

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How does AI portray religion? Does it talk about it in the way that most Americans do? Does it treat all religions the same?

CEFE-AI (https://cefe.ai/) is a multi-university consortium that has been trying to answer these questions. For the last few months it has been developing benchmarks on how AI models treat faith, and the results are surprising. On this episode we talk with David Wingate, professor at BYU and academic lead for CEFE-AI, about the group's work.

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Yes, AI is new and unique—but we've been through an information revolution before. The printing press transformed religion, authority, and public life. Those upheavals offer insights into the age of AI.

Michelle Margolis is the Norman E. Alexander librarian for Jewish studies at Columbia University, and she's the past president of the Association of Jewish Libraries. From censorship and misinformation to expertise and trust, we explore why history still matters when technology changes everything.

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The market in religious chatbots is now quite healthy. If you’re Episcopalian you can go to Ask Cathy; if you’re Catholic there’s Magisterium; if you’re a Latter-day Saint there’s LDSBot; if you’re Muslim there’s Ansari; and if you’re Jewish you can go to Rav Dicta, or one of the services that lets you talk to the avatars of famous historical rabbis.

Zohar Atkins is the creator of Yochai, a chatbot designed for engaging with Jewish texts, rather than just getting answers to Jewish questions. We demoed the newly-launched product and talk about how AI might change Jewish learning.

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As a decentralized faith, Islam does not have one single approach to AI. Muslim communities are constructing norms around AI usage in religious scholarship and sermon-writing through a mix of guidance from religious leaders and emergent communal practice. I talked to Waleed Kadous, the creator of Islamic AI assistant Ansari, about how the technology is shaping not only Islamic scholarship but our value systems and real world politics.

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The idea that human beings are created in the image of God is a central part of both Jewish and Christian theology, and with the rise of AI it has become perhaps the best example of how ancient religious wisdom can regulate modern technology by reminding us of what we value most of all. If human beings are created in the image of God—if we have something in us that separates us from animals—then we have an idea to rally around, a way to articulate that humanity’s special status needs to be preserved at all cost.

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There is more than one type of religious approach to AI. While the Catholic response has received by far the most media attention, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has been developing a response that has a stronger emphasis on practice. I spoke with Elder Gerrit Gong, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, about the church's approach.

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On May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV issued Magnifica Humanitas, a major new document on AI for the world's biggest religion. I talked with Brian Green about what it says, why it was written this way, where it sits in the history of major church documents, and whether it is likely to effect change on the AI industry.

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