How AI could change our relationship with religion

By Sreevas Sahasranamam, University of Glasgow

Science and faith are often kept in two distinct boxes that hardly ever intersect. However, I believe that as AI becomes more mainstream, it will fundamentally alter our engagement with faith and spirituality.

Let’s start by looking at what is already happening. Most ancient faith-related texts were documented in papyrus and palm leaves, many of which are difficult to access in the modern world due to two challenges.

First, a lot of those ancient texts that are still available are in fragments, some of which could crumble at any time. Second, for texts that have been digitised already, the language used in them is known only to a few people today and therefore the texts remain inaccessible to most.

AI is altering this landscape fundamentally by making access to them easy. A popular example from 2023 showed how computer scientists from the University of Kentucky had used AI to reveal the contents of carbonised papyrus that was burnt in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.

Scientists looked through 3D X-ray images of the papyrus. They trained AI to read letters in the scrolls based on subtle changes left in structure of the papyrus by the ancient ink.

The AI was able to decipher and translate the ancient Greek word for “purple” on the scroll. Other ancient texts from the Indian sub-continent, for example, are in the Sanskrit language or Grantha script, which very few people can read and understand today.

Here again, AI systems are using language translation and text prediction to predict missing characters in old inscriptions. Some start-ups use AI technology called small language models that are trained on Sanskrit texts to create an AI-Guru (AI-tutors) to guide people through these texts. AI can also be used to preserve and help to restore faded cave paintings.

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