03/07/2026 15:00
- 19:30
HALL: Parenzo - A18
Contact:
Van Emmerik M.
Chair:
Wright O.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping modern societies, yet this transformation generates profound inequalities. Social inequalities such as poverty, discrimination, and exclusion are being amplified and reconfigured through algorithmic systems that determine access to employment, housing, healthcare, and justice. Just as industrialisation created new class divisions while promising prosperity, AI now presents similar paradoxes—offering efficiency and innovation while simultaneously encoding bias, concentrating power, and deepening existing inequalities. While philosophy and sociology dominate AI ethics discourse, theology and religious traditions remain largely absent from these conversations. What is urgently needed is an articulation of the distinctive contribution religion and theology can make to addressing AI-generated inequalities.
This panel examines AI-generated inequalities—algorithmic bias, economic displacement, surveillance, and concentrated power—through the lens of religious and theological responses. Our speakers explore what theology and religious traditions can contribute to understanding and addressing these inequalities. Rather than focusing narrowly on religious inequalities, we ask how religion and theology can speak to the broader social inequalities that AI creates, offering distinctive ethical frameworks, prophetic critique, and visions of justice that secular AI ethics may lack. What resources do religious traditions offer for critiquing and transforming AI systems that perpetuate inequality? Can theological concepts of human dignity, the sacred, justice, and the common good inform more equitable AI development? Has religion's marginalisation in AI discourse deprived society of crucial moral resources? The panel will discuss these and similar questions.
