Marius Dorobanțu
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Religion and Theology, Assistant Professor of Theology & Artificial Intelligence
I research and teach at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL). Areas of expertise: science & religion, AI, ethics, and theological anthropology. Since 2022, I've been a fellow of the ISSR (International Society for Science & Religion).
§ Research projects
• 2024-2027: Co-director of "Repose, Insight, Activity: A Trinity of Spiritual Exercises," an interdisciplinary project supported with a $500k grant by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, through The Science of Religious and Spiritual Exercises initiative: https://www.templetonworldcharity.org/projects-resources/project-database/32537
• 2020-2023: Core member of "Understanding Spiritual Intelligence: Psychological, Theological and Computational Approaches," an interdisciplinary project supported with a $1M grant by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, through the Diverse Intelligences initiative: https://www.templetonworldcharity.org/projects-resources/project-database/0542
• 2017-2020: PhD in ethics at the University of Strasbourg (FR). My award-winning thesis analysed the potential philosophical and theological implications of human-level AI.
§ Upcoming books:
• Artificial Intelligence and the Image of God: Are We More than Intelligent Machines? (Cambridge University Press)
• Orthodoxy and Artificial Intelligence (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark)
§ Edited volume:
Perspectives on Spiritual Intelligence (Routledge), co-edited with Fraser Watts.
§ Most recent paper: M. Dorobantu. 2024. “AI and Christianity: Friends or Foes?” In Cambridge Companion to Religion and Artificial Intelligence, edited by B. Singler and F. Watts. Cambridge University Press. 88-108. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009031721.007.
Institutional page: https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/marius-dorobantu
Please message me if you need the full text of any of my publications.
§ Research projects
• 2024-2027: Co-director of "Repose, Insight, Activity: A Trinity of Spiritual Exercises," an interdisciplinary project supported with a $500k grant by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, through The Science of Religious and Spiritual Exercises initiative: https://www.templetonworldcharity.org/projects-resources/project-database/32537
• 2020-2023: Core member of "Understanding Spiritual Intelligence: Psychological, Theological and Computational Approaches," an interdisciplinary project supported with a $1M grant by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, through the Diverse Intelligences initiative: https://www.templetonworldcharity.org/projects-resources/project-database/0542
• 2017-2020: PhD in ethics at the University of Strasbourg (FR). My award-winning thesis analysed the potential philosophical and theological implications of human-level AI.
§ Upcoming books:
• Artificial Intelligence and the Image of God: Are We More than Intelligent Machines? (Cambridge University Press)
• Orthodoxy and Artificial Intelligence (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark)
§ Edited volume:
Perspectives on Spiritual Intelligence (Routledge), co-edited with Fraser Watts.
§ Most recent paper: M. Dorobantu. 2024. “AI and Christianity: Friends or Foes?” In Cambridge Companion to Religion and Artificial Intelligence, edited by B. Singler and F. Watts. Cambridge University Press. 88-108. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009031721.007.
Institutional page: https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/marius-dorobantu
Please message me if you need the full text of any of my publications.
less
InterestsView All (10)
Uploads
Books by Marius Dorobanțu
Papers by Marius Dorobanțu
In June 2022, months before the public release of ChatGPT and the ensuing generative AI revolution, a Google engineer started claiming that an AI program he was internally testing had become self-aware. His assessment was largely driven by his own religious beliefs and the AI’s predilection to discuss existential topics. It was an early demonstration of how the intersection between religion and AI would come to play an increasingly prominent role in public debates over the nature and ethical use of these technologies. If AI is to become ubiquitous, how will it be integrated into religious practices? If AI chatbots started to generate religious discourse and even claim to have developed religious interests and beliefs, how could we evaluate the authenticity of such outputs? Is it possible, at least theoretically, for artificial systems to develop anything close to what in humans we call religion?
To explore these questions raised by the nascent generative AI technology, I convened an interdisciplinary workshop in Amsterdam in December 2022, supported by CLUE+, the interfaculty research institute at the Vrije Universiteit. Some of the articles in this special section, which I guest-edited, emerged out of that workshop, while a few others were subsequently added. The fundamental question explored in all of them, from multiple disciplinary angles, is whether AI could play a significant role in religious life, either as a tool in human religiosity or as an authentic religious subject itself.
Philosopher Pim Haselager highlights how comparing human cognition with AI can significantly inform humanity’s journey of self-understanding, somewhat similar to the comparisons with animals and angels in medieval theological anthropology. He contrasts the smartness and cognitive abilities of AI with its complete lack of understanding and sentience, which he regards as sine qua non conditions of authentic religiosity. In another article, psychologist Fraser Watts and the late AI pioneer Yorick Wilks explore the feasibility and acceptability of AI-powered spiritual companions. Based on empirical research conducted with both GPT chatbots and Wizard-of-Oz methodology (humans masquerading as AIs), the article tentatively concludes that although artificial spiritual companions might proliferate, especially those that facilitate self-exploration, there are still dimensions of human spiritual counselling that might resist automation for the foreseeable future. Theologian Max Tretter intersects robotics, pop-culture and Christian eschatology to ask an intriguing question: is there an afterlife for robots and, if so, what might it be like? If there is hope for all creation to undergo eschatological completion, he argues, then the tentative answer to such a question could only be affirmative, opening up a discussion about the diverse conceptions of afterlife that can be imagined for robots. Computer scientist William Clocksin wrestles head-on with the question of whether intelligent robots could become religious. Following up on his 2023 article in this same journal, he makes a compelling case that future androids would likely develop a form of non-human personhood through sustained engagement in social relationships. If androids start questioning their place in the world and relationships with others, they might use religion in doing so, just like humans do, especially if they come to acknowledge their interdependence with others – human, robotic, or divine. Religious scholar Robert Geraci highlights the critical role religious beliefs and practices might play in recognizing artificial general intelligence, should it ever emerge. Reviewing the historical intersection between religion and robotics, the article critiques the colonial frameworks at work in evaluating “otherness” – of both humans and robots. It also reflects upon the need for an inclusive approach to integrating intelligent robots into our societies by acknowledging their potential for religious experience and participation. Theologian Daekyung Jung reaches a similar conclusion in his article, arguing from the perspective of embodied cognition. Future AI systems, particularly those integrated with soft robotics and driven by homeostasis as a fundamental goal, might exhibit religious behaviors if they develop human-level intelligence and self-awareness. Such religious behaviors would serve the AIs as cognitive mechanisms helpful in navigating existential challenges and the need to transcend finitude. In contrast with Clocksin, Geraci and Jung, in my own article I conclude that authentic religiosity is an unlikely development in robots, despite the theological openness to such scenarios. I argue that religion’s deeply embodied, social, and phenomenological underpinnings in humans may not be replicable in AI systems due to their fundamentally different bodies, cognitive architectures and needs.
Robin Dunbar’s How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures rehabilitates the long-standing anthropo- logical view that religion evolved in two phases. The first, shamanic phase of religion consisted mainly of trance-dancing practices in hunter-gatherer societies, followed by a later stage in which beliefs about gods became more elaborate. Dunbar dates the transition to this later phase of “doctrinal” reli- gion as coming in with the agrarian settlements of the Neolithic period, 10,000 years ago. The first, practice-based phase of religion used to be called “primitive”, which implied a pejorative view of it, but there is no such condescension in Dunbar’s two-phase theory of the evolution of religion.
We will focus here on the distinction between shamanic and doctrinal religion, and elaborate a theoretical position about the different modes of human cognition associated with shamanic and doctrinal religion. We will relate these two phases in the evolution of religion to the two different modes of cognition that have been identified in humans, sometimes called “experiential” and “rational” (Watts, 2020).
In How Religion Evolved, Dunbar uses his evolutionary perspective on religion as an interpretive lens for understanding the current state of religion in Western society. We will here extend his approach to the distinction that is now often made between religion and spirituality, suggesting that the religion that is currently being rejected is a form of doctrinal religion, and that there is a turn to spirituality that in some ways (though not in every way) is like shamanic religion.
Finally, we will compare Dunbar’s approach to the evolution of religion with the evolutionary Cognitive Science of Religion, suggesting that Dunbar’s approach benefits from the distinction between shamanic and doctrinal religion; from focusing on practices and experience as well as beliefs; and from taking a socially-embedded rather than an individualistic approach.
Modern developments in evolutionary and cognitive science have increasingly challenged the view that humans are distinctive creatures. In theological anthropology, this view is germane to the doctrine of the image of God. To address these challenges, imago Dei theology has shifted from substantial toward functional and relational interpretations: the image of God is manifested in our divine mandate to rule the world, or in the unique personal relationships we have with God and with each other. If computers ever attain human-level Artificial Intelligence, such imago Dei interpretations could be seriously contested. This article reviews the recent shifts in theological anthropology and reflects theologically on the questions raised by the potential scenario of human-level AI. It argues that a positive outcome of this interdisciplinary dialogue is possible: theological anthropology has much to gain from engaging with AI. Comparing ourselves to intelligent machines, far from endangering our uniqueness, might instead lead to a better understanding of what makes humans genuinely distinctive and in the image of God.