Name: FBK-ISR | Ciclo di seminari: “(Dis-)Enchantment in Religion and Ethics”
Start: 2024-11-11T11:00:00+01:00
End: 2024-11-11T13:00:00+01:00
Location: Fondazione Bruno Kessler _ FBK Aula Piccola

$FBK-ISR | Ciclo di seminari: \u201c(Dis-)Enchantment in Religion and Ethics\u201d$

Technology as Consolation. The Promise of Artificial Intelligence from a sociological perspective
About this Event

Technology as Consolation. The Promise of Artificial Intelligence from a sociological perspective

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not just a “key technology”, but a world-changing and world-creating collective cultural phenomenon. Against this background, the question is posed as to why and how techno-promises (or techno-utopias) are increasingly replacing religious experiences and what consequences for humans are associated with this. Form a sociological perspective the increasing exhaustion (individual, societal and planetary) is seen as the main reason for the longing for salvation and the desire for technology-based consolation rituals.
Promising narratives about the future of AI (progress stories, policy papers, visions of AI creators, media reports or fictional representations) are now being received by audiences that are open to highly speculative predictions and attributions of meaning. Based on promises of technology and faith in technology, the associated visions of the future represent far-reaching horizons of expectation. These include hopes for relief, secular fantasies of redemption, equivalents of holiness and new forms of sacralization in the form of data religions, digital solutionism or post-humanist eschatologies. In short, AI symbolizes the renaissance of religious promises in the guise of this-worldly promises of potential.

Speaker: Prof. Dr. STEFAN SELKE | Furtwangen University

Scientific coordination: Massimo Leone, Director FBK-ISR

Cycle of seminars: “(Dis-)Enchantment in Religion and Ethics“

The talk will be held in English.

The presentation will be in-person in the FBK Aula Piccola while seats last and online.

Registration by November 8, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. is required in order to arrange the connection.

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