Spiritual and artificial intelligence

The chapter probes the intricate question of whether machines can possess spiritual intelligence, an attribute traditionally seen as distinctly human and tied to our proclivity for religion and spirituality. An examination of the 2022 case of Google’s LaMDA and the subsequent debate on AI sentience suggests that spiritual intelligence could be critical in discerning true personhood in AI. The chapter examines the implications of AI’s ability to mimic humanlike spiritual dialogue, and whether such capabilities could eventually be deemed genuine spiritual intelligence or remain mere sophisticated emulations. To authentically emulate spiritual intelligence, and not merely replicate it in its propositional outputs, AI would need to embody the existential attitude of openness and attunement to deeper meanings entailed by spiritual intelligence. From a theological perspective, spiritual intelligence is not an absurd possibility in intelligent machines, on the condition that they achieve sentience, which is required for I-Thou relationality. A cognitive perspective on religion and spiritual intelligence indicates that these phenomena are linked with the particularity of human embodiment, dual cognitive architecture, and the contingencies of our evolutionary history. To be spiritually intelligent, AI would likely need to become humanlike, thus not just human-level. Such a development is regarded as unlikely, given the alienness of current and foreseeable AI technologies.