In some areas, growing numbers of people have identified as nonreligious in recent years. What’s behind that trend? In a series of studies, Chicago Booth’s Joshua Conrad Jackson and his coauthors find that there’s a negative relationship between religious belief and the proliferation of automation technologies such as robotics and AI. The researchers identify some of the mechanisms that may be at work in this relationship, which Jackson suggests may lead to growing religious polarization over time.
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Narrator: Religion is one of humankind’s oldest institutions, and for much of our history, the practice of religion has been universal, but the past 100 years have seen large por-tions of some populations moving away from religious affiliation. From 1948 to 2005, nonreligious identification in the US rose from 3 percent to 10 percent. That number then doubled from 2005 to 2020. While religious affiliation has been declining, technologies such as automation, robotics, and AI have proliferated widely. Could that technological trend be connected to the rise in secular-ism?
Joshua Conrad Jackson: Religious decline is this big question in the social sciences, and a lot of theories have tried to propose what might be causing it. One of the dominant theories is that it might be the rise of science and technology. This is something that goes all the way back to Max Weber, who suggested that the rise of science would lead to what he called disen-chantment of the world. This hasn’t really happened, though. It seems that when people become experts in scientific domains, they don’t actually lose their religion. They’re more likely to complement their scientific beliefs with their religious beliefs. And so what we were trying to understand is: Has AI, and automation specifically, contributed to a religious decline that you don’t see in a lot of other sci-entific domains?
Narrator: That’s Chicago Booth’s Joshua Conrad Jackson. He and his coau-thors found in a series of studies that the countries that experienced the quickest growth in automa-tion also saw the biggest drops in overall religious belief, even after controlling for factors such as wealth, cultural and governing differences, and access to other technologies. The studies explored this relationship at different levels. One looked at religious decline and the size of the robotics sector in 68 countries over a 14-year span, while others examined the question at the metropolitan, organi-zational, or individual level. One study looked at 44,000 individuals in New Zealand who changed career paths to see whether a new career in computer science or other fields would affect religious affiliation. (soft music continues) Another looked at how simply reading about impressive AI or scien-tific innovations might influence beliefs. All of these studies confirmed a negative relationship be-tween automation and religion.
Joshua Conrad Jackson: One really interesting finding from this paper that I like to share is—from that New Zealand study, where we looked at about 44,000 people over 15 years. What we found in that study is that people who went into computer science, jobs that required skills in programming became significantly less religious, and the longer they were in a computer-science occupation, the less religious they became. But this wasn’t something we found with other kinds of sciences. Actually, when people went into an occupation that required medical specializa-tion, like a doctor, they became more religious by about the same magnitude. This was about 2 per-centage points in either direction. And so while we’re talking about quite small changes, these were pretty statistically robust. And since religion is something that so few people change as an identity across their lifespan, it was actually magnitudes larger than the effect that would be explained by go-ing into, say, biology or mathematics.
Narrator: But even if a negative relationship is apparent, does that actually mean that automation is causing a reduction in religious belief?
Joshua Conrad Jackson: The reality is that we can’t truly know that automa-tion is playing a causal role in all of these studies. For example, in the occupation study, one possibil-ity is that as these New Zealanders are moving into computer science, they’re moving into an area that is already quite secular. And so as they spend longer in that community, they’re more and more likely to deconvert. And we’re very open to the possibility of these alternative explanations, and we actually view them as probably just accelerants of the same phenomenon that we’ve been discussing already. If you have a scientific occupation that is decreasing religiosity, then it makes sense that if people join a community of people with that occupation, they’re gonna become even less religious. But it’s important to note that when you do these really big panel studies, you’re not gonna be able to say with every study that you’ve identified a causal mechanism.
Narrator: Whether or not AI and automation are causing religious decline, could the relationship the researchers have observed mean that the demise of religion is inevitable as these technologies continue to flourish?
Joshua Conrad Jackson: I think that this is possible, but an equally possible alternative is that we are about to see greater religious polarization, that in places that are already religious, we’re gonna see them getting more religious, and in places that are less religious right now, we’re gonna see them get less religious. This is because in places that are more religious, these are also the places that are more reluctant to adopt automation and AI, the kinds of factors that we iden-tify as causing religious declines. They’re also the kinds of places where people attach religion to mo-rality, which is a separate mechanism of religious decline that we haven’t discussed in this paper, but we think is a corollary to our finding, this idea that when people think that you need to be religious to be a moral person, it’s a very strong adhesive that prevents religious decline in these communities. (soft music continues)
Narrator: The researchers also suggest that one possible reason AI and au-tomation have such a strong negative relationship with religious belief is that AI systems and God are often ascribed with many of the same features, such as being in multiple places at once, having un-limited speed and knowledge, and exceeding human capabilities. They further suggest that as these technologies continue to help us solve problems and make predictions, they may, for some people, reduce religious practice. (music fades)
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