POSSIBILITIES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE STUDY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Abstract

The article is devoted to the issue of the correlation between religious experience and artificial intelligence (AI) and the potential of AI in the study of religious experience. Generative artificial intelligence is already widely used in the field of religion, it helps to write sermons, and neural networks are implanted in temple statues. In 2020, the Vatican organised a conference attended by representatives of the most advanced technology companies such as IMB, Microsoft, FAO, and together with representatives of the Vatican and the government, they created and signed a document called Rome call for AI ethics, which refers to an ethical approach to the use of AI and emphasises the need for companies and governments to be extremely responsible for the creation and use of such technologies. All these facts emphasise the seriousness and importance of scientific understanding of this issue. In this article, we have considered two possible options for the interaction between artificial intelligence and religious experience, the first of which is the possibility of simulating religious experience using artificial intelligence technology, namely that AI can analyse human emotions in detail and, based on this information, dynamically adapt visual and audio content to enhance certain emotional states. It sounds quite fantastic, but in practice, it is no longer impossible given the amount of information that modern AI operates with. The second option, in our opinion, is the potential to use AI to analyse and interpret a person's religious experience. Given the aforementioned ability of artificial intelligence to use and analyse huge amounts of data simultaneously, it can help decipher human feelings and contribute to their deeper understanding. Based on the analysis of both possible scenarios, the article identifies potentially positive and negative aspects of the interaction between artificial intelligence and religious experience.