AI and Faith has compiled resources from our Artificial General Intelligence theme, from January to February 2026.
Podcast
What if the key to safe AI and AGI isn’t making it smarter, but making it wiser? AI and Faith Research Fellow Mark Graves discusses his approach to AI development that prioritizes practical wisdom and compassion over raw intelligence. We explore how ancient philosophical traditions from Aristotle to Buddhism could guide the next generation of AI systems, and why suffering should be central to AI ethics. Moreover, how can we embed said wisdom and compassion in AI systems? How can we measure it? Additionally, we’ll also explore how healthcare applications are already demonstrating what compassionate AI looks like in practice. This conversation challenges conventional thinking about AI safety and offers a surprisingly hopeful vision for human-AI collaboration.
AI and Faith Articles
Long-time leaders and collaborators in the religious discussion of transhumanism, Calvin Mercer and Tracy Trothen offer accessible introductions to the ability of transhumanisms to dialogue with religious traditions, most recently in their forthcoming volume Transhumanism and Faith. Here, Trothen and Mercer offer an overview of this volume. Our readers may note that this volume understands religion and transhumanism as concerned with questions of ultimate meaning and thus draw from established conversations grappling with large questions of meaning, spirituality, and creation. The authors call for religious attention to the socio-economic and political conditions that frame AI development to inform ethical involvement and responses.
We treat AGI like a mirror; it is easy to give it a quick check before heading out the door and your way. But when we glance into the looking glass of AGI, how much is captured in the frame? Here, David Landau adds clarity and dimension to the relationship between AGI as a mirror reflecting infinite images and the Infinite.
Outside Articles
As the Vatican considers the ongoing race toward AGI, AI and Faith advisor Father Paolo Benanti considers whether an algorithm has a soul, and if not, how we should respond to their growing influence. Explore how the Pope’s “AI Whisperer” is bridging the gap between moral theology and AI in this piece from Transformer News.
As AI is increasingly framed as a source of meaning, guidance, and salvation, this Christianity Today piece from Brad Edwards argues that technology is quietly taking on religious significance in a spiritually hungry culture. Against digital “reenchantment,” Edwards insists the church matters more than ever, offering embodied community, wisdom, and true transcendence that no AI (or future AGI) could provide. Read more here.
