Seeking Alignment: Religious Imaginaries in the Past and Future of AI

As part of the 2025–2026 50th anniversary program of the , the Department, together with the and the , is pleased to present: Seeking Alignment: Religious Imaginaries in the Past and Future of AI.

The Seeking Alignment panel brings together scholars working in the study of religion, history of science, media theory, and computer science to consider how the religious pasts of AI shape the foretelling of its future. From “spiritual bliss attractors” to worries about a “god-like” AI, the genesis and consequences of AI—how its history is told and its future is prophesied—are steeped in religious imaginaries that require scholarly analysis. In the mid-twentieth-century, cybernetic and neural network theories grew out of spiritual convictions about relations among humans, animals, and machines “of loving grace.” Today, some people worry that AI may come to have an omnipotent “galaxy brain,” while others want to make sure that AI is infused with a specifically Christian God, as in tech billionaires who seek to “align” AI tools to hasten the "second coming of Christ."

The panel will focus on the concept of “alignment,” or efforts to align Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) with human values, as well as “misalignment,” when AGI and human values diverge. The panelists will ask what we can learn about AGI by considering a longer history of “religious” practices that train, prompt, or discipline human beings to live and think in “alignment” with higher powers and potent systems. What can past visions of religious alignment tell us about our visions for an AI future? And what might we learn from the people discarded and “corrected” in the pursuit of such success?

Join us for a discussion on how the religious pasts of AI shape the foretelling of its future followed by a reception at the Campbell Conference Facility to continue the conversation!

Venue:

, 1 Devonshire Pl, Toronto, ON M5S 3K7

Moderator: Professor , FRSC, University of Toronto

Panelists:

• Professor , University of Wisconsin Madison, author of Seductive Methods: Sexual Success in the Computational Imagination, U Chicago Press (under contract).
• Professor , Franklin and Marshall College, author of Neuromatic, or; A Particular History of Religion and the Brain, U Chicago Press.
• Professor , University of Toronto, author of Insufferable Tools: Feminism against Big Tech, Duke UP (forthcoming).
• Professor , University of Toronto, author of “A Right to Reality: Human Dignity and Generative AI”, Nordic Journal of Human Rights (forthcoming).
• Professor , University of Toronto, co-author of "Data, Annotation, and Meaning-Making: The Politics of Categorization in Annotating a Dataset of Faith-based Communal Violence", Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (2024).

About the Department for the Study of Religion

The Department for the Study of Religion is home to one of the largest and most diverse undergraduate and graduate religion programs in the world. Our interdisciplinary faculty create an intellectually stimulating environment in which to explore how religions have grown and developed, how they have been understood, and how we can think about them in our pluralistic society. The department is highly regarded internationally for a range of strengths, especially:

• Anthropology of Religion
• Buddhist Studies
• Global Christianities
• Islamic Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Philosophy of Religion
• Religion, Culture, and Politics
• Religions of the Americas and Turtle Island
• Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity
• South Asian Religions

About the Data Sciences Institute

The Data Sciences Institute (DSI) at the University of Toronto is a hub and incubator for data science research, training, and partnerships. Data Sciences is defined as the science of collecting, manipulating, storing, visualizing, learning from, and extracting useful information from data in a reproducible, fair and ethical way. In 2021 the University of Toronto launched the DSI to unify data sciences research across the University, its affiliated research institutes, and external partners. The DSI leverages the University’s leadership and expertise in the foundational and emergent fields of data sciences. Our programming and initiatives are designed to facilitate collaboration, as well as the development and application of new data science methodologies and tools in a training-focused environment.

About the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society is a research institute at the University of Toronto that explores the ethical and societal implications of technology. Our mission is to deepen knowledge of technologies, societies, and humanity by integrating research across traditional boundaries to build human-centred solutions.

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