Where AI Thrives, Religion May Struggle; Chicago Booth Review, March 26, 2024

 Jeff Cockrell, Chicago Booth Review; Where AI Thrives, Religion May Struggle

"The United States has seen one of the biggest drops: the share of its residents who said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque fell from 70 percent in 1999 to 47 percent in 2020, according to Gallup.

One potential factor is the proliferation of artificial intelligence and robotics, according to a team of researchers led by Chicago Booth’s Joshua Conrad Jackson and Northwestern’s Adam Waytz. The more exposed people are to automation technologies, the researchers find, the weaker their religious beliefs. They argue that the relationship is not coincidental and that “there are meaningful properties of automation which encourage religious decline."

Researchers and philosophers have pondered the connection between science and religion for many years. The German sociologist Max Weber spoke of science contributing to the “disenchantment of the world,” or the replacement of supernatural explanations for the workings of the universe with rational, scientific ones. Evidence from prior research doesn’t support a strong “disenchantment” effect, Jackson says, but he and his coresearchers suggest that AI and robotics may influence people’s beliefs in a way that science more generally does not."

A tale of two ethics; The Economist, 10/1/16

The Economist; A tale of two ethics:

"THE phrases “ethic of conviction” and “ethic of responsibility” mean little to most English-speakers. In Germany the equivalent terms—Gesinnungsethik and Verantwortungsethik—are household words. Pundits drop them casually during television talk shows. Hosts use them as conversation-starters at dinner parties. The concepts draw on the opposition between idealism and pragmatism that runs through politics everywhere. But they also capture a specific moral tension that is “very German”, says Manfred Güllner, a sociologist and pollster. Anyone interested in understanding German politics, on anything from the euro to refugees, would do well to get a handle on them.

The terms come from the sociologist Max Weber, who used them in a speech he gave in January 1919 to a group of leftist students at a Munich bookstore."