Trento, Italy – 3-5 March 2020: International Conference “Artificial Intelligence and Religion, AIR2020” (posposto a ottobre-novembre 2020)

Organizer:

Location:

Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Humanities Hub, Center for Religious Studies, Via Santa Croce 77, I-38122 Trento

The goal of the conference Artificial Intelligence and Religion – AIR2020 is to explore current interactions between research and innovation in artificial intelligence (AI) on the one hand, religious communities, institutions, practices, precepts, beliefs, and rites on the other.

AIR2020 will bring together researchers and scholars in artificial intelligence, religious studies, anthropology, economics, legal studies, philosophy, and sociology. Conference sections will cover

• the role of religious vocabulary in popular AI narratives and techno-utopian or dystopian visions of human futures,
  
• the involvement of religious actors in shaping current debates over AI governance,
  
• the impact of AI technologies on freedom of religion or belief,
  
• the value alignment problem for AI with regard to religiously grounded values,
  
• and the discrepancy between non-expert perceptions of AI and the current state of the art in AI research, development and innovation.

The AIR2020 conference is embedded in the mission on religion and innovation of the Center for Religious Studies at Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), as articulated in the Center’s 2019 position paper, and it continues our 2018/19 workshop and lecture series Religion and Innovation, with a specific focus on innovations in AI and their impact on religion. Our position paper proposes a set of eleven recommendations concerning action research in religion and innovation that can benefit societal actors in their attempts to strengthen the interaction between religion and innovation.

Speakers and abstracts:

M. Abdullah, R. Scalia, Waqf-Sukuk for long-term infrastructural projects in Italy – The key role of Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain

S. Aupers, ‘Things greater than Though’. AI and a technical re-enchantment of the world

E. Baffelli, The Android and the Fax: AI and Buddhism in Contemporary Japan

D. Balazka and Dario Rodighiero,  Was Blumer right? Religious values and quantified self in the Petabyte Age

Z. Calo, Human Dignity after the Human

Y. Chaudhary, Interacting with and within the Artificial

N. Dershowitz, Morality and AI

R. Geraci, Technological Give-and-Take: Religions of AI in Indian Science and Engineering

V. Kessler, E. Kessler, Is virtue ethics really suited for Artificial Intelligence?

O. Krüger, God, the Singularity and the Transcendent Superintelligence: Philosophical Contexts of the Posthumanist Utopia

L. Obadia, Magic of AI, AI for Magic? Magical Thinking Practices and Digital Age: Remarks for an Opening Field of Study

J. Singer, Utopian and Dystopian Representations of Artificial Intelligence in Arabic-language blogs on al-Jazeera

B. Singler, “Blessed by the Algorithm”: Religious Conceptions of AI and Their Impact on Society