This research area brings historical, theological, and philosophical inquiry to bear on rapid technological change in the modern era, focusing especially on artificial intelligence and changing notions of the self. 

Research in this area aims to enrich debates about religion, technology, and the nature of the self at both the scholarly and policy level. It investigates these concepts as co-constitutive of one another rather than as isolated phenomena. By curating humanistic inquiry into the development of different understandings of the self across various religious and social contexts and in light of scientific innovations, this research advances our ability to grapple with the rapid changes that new technologies, most acutely artificial intelligence, pose to our social, political, and spiritual lives.

Artificial intelligence in particular poses new questions for our understanding of what it is to have a “self.” Simultaneously, what it is to be a “self” shapes the assumptions that have guided the creation of AI. This can be seen, for example, in the fact that its most popular form is a “chatbot” that simulates person-to-person communication. If human agency can be simulated by large language models, we ask, does the model not itself contain a self? How do such models, in turn, reshape our understanding of the self? And what effects might they have on our societies and politics? We cannot grapple with such complex questions without also understanding the way religion has shaped modern ideas of the self.