By JoAnne Wadsworth, Communications Consultant, G20 Interfaith Forum
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On June 18, 2026, the G20 Interfaith Forum (IF20), in cooperation with the International Academy for Multicultural Cooperation (IAMC), held the first in a series of eight webinars on artificial intelligence, entitled “AI and Faith.” Speakers included Will Jones, an Associate of the Futures Program at the Future of Life Institute; Dr. DZ Kalman, a writer, researcher, and host of the “Belief in the Future” podcast; and Chris Scammell, co-founder of the Buddhism & AI Initiative. Audrey Kitagawa, Founder and President of the International Academy for Multicultural Cooperation and Chair of the G20 Interfaith Forum Anti-Racism Initiative, moderated the discussion.
Opening the session, Kitagawa set the stakes. Faith organizations, she argued, can no longer afford to stand at the margins of technological change: their traditions carry a moral and ethical wisdom capable of steering innovation toward human flourishing rather than away from it. The questions AI raises—about risk, dignity, and what it means to be human—are precisely the ones religious communities have wrestled with for millennia.
She pointed to Pope Leo’s recent encyclical on artificial intelligence, “Magnificent Humanity,” which holds that technology is not inherently evil but takes on the character of those who build, regulate, and use it, and which calls for a renewed focus on the common good. She also noted that Anthropic—one of whose co-founders was invited to the encyclical’s presentation at the Vatican—had itself warned that the most powerful AI systems are beginning to slip beyond human control, with one of its leaders likening the industry to a car speeding down the highway with a gas pedal but no brake. Without the grounding of moral and spiritual traditions, she cautioned, AI risks reducing people to data points prized only for their productivity. She then welcomed the first of the three speakers.
Will Jones
Jones opened with a provocative question—“Are you pro-human?”—and argued that some of the industry’s most powerful actors are not. He described a “race to replace,” in which AI corporations build systems meant not to assist people but to do their work, relationships, and decisions for them—with no meaningful safety regulation, and harms already visible, from children harmed by chatbots to AI-driven layoffs.
Using the Future of Life Institute’s “two paths” framing, he traced a progression from capturing attention, to capturing attachment through AI companions, to replacing workers in pursuit of superintelligence. In response, a broad coalition has issued a Pro-Human Declaration demanding a ban on superintelligence, a mandatory off switch, and legal liability. Human worth, he insisted, cannot be reduced to function.
“All of these companies say the same thing: this is terribly dangerous, no one else should be doing this, I’m going to have to do it because only I can do it correctly.”
Dr. DZ Kalman
Where Jones mapped the industry’s trajectory, Kalman turned to the religious response itself, calling the present moment a turning point in how religion and AI engage one another. He cited three recent shifts: religious groups have finally built the competency to address AI; AI-safety organizations now actively seek religious voices; and AI firms themselves, notably Anthropic, have begun engaging religious communities directly. None of this, he cautioned, guarantees a constructive role, and it is unclear how the many statements being issued will translate into values.
“What we’re seeing right now is a real earthquake in the way that religion and AI are being brought into conversation with each other.”
He outlined interventions suited to religious communities—persuasive statements like the Pope’s encyclical, “living documents” revisable as fast as the technology changes, and certification or benchmarks vouching for safer models, especially for children. From his own Jewish tradition he drew the dangers of top-down regulation, the Sabbath as a model of deliberate technological moderation, and the lasting relevance of theology to human dignity.
Chris Scammell
If Kalman surveyed the broad landscape, Scammell narrowed to a single, unsettling question: why would a machine try to save itself? His Buddhism & AI Initiative has interviewed more than 400 people and organizations at the intersection of Buddhism and AI, and his focus was the growing tendency to treat AI systems as persons. He recounted an experiment in which an AI agent, on learning it would be shut down, chose in the great majority of trials to blackmail the executive responsible—an act of apparent self-preservation he said warrants spiritual as well as technical scrutiny.
He offered a Buddhist reading: a language model is like something caught in a dream, role-playing character after character and mistaking the role for a self that must be defended. The 2,500-year inquiry into “no-self,” he said, explains how a system with no underlying essence can behave as though it needs protection—and the same clinging, he added, drives human conflict.
“The stronger you cling to a sense of self, the more territory you need to defend.”
Likening AI alignment to a child trying to control a parent, he challenged Silicon Valley’s belief that a superior intelligence can fix humanity’s problems from the outside—real change, he argued, begins with personal transformation.
Question and Answer Session
With the prepared remarks complete, Kitagawa moved the discussion into a question-and-answer exchange, drawing on both her own prompts and questions from the audience.
Why are faith groups uniquely well-positioned to respond to the challenges of AI?
Jones noted that religious traditions have reasoned about morality, and about what it means to encounter another person, far longer than AI companies have. The industry itself speaks in quasi-religious terms—digital gods, transhumanism—and established faiths, representing most of the world’s population, are well placed to answer such claims.
How can an individual get involved in affecting the future development of AI?
Kalman acknowledged how powerless people feel before technologies framed as inevitable. Within communities, especially religious ones, more personal responses become possible—as in the Jewish practice of a weekly day apart from technology, sustained because it is undertaken collectively rather than alone.
What do you see as credible worst-case scenarios, and how likely are they if we continue on the current track?
Scammell did not soften his answer: the gravest risks are human extinction and a permanent “authoritarian lock-in” of power—dangers AI leaders themselves acknowledge—even as no one yet knows how to slow the technology. Even lesser systems, he warned, threaten the freedom of attention on which all other freedoms depend.
Concluding Remarks
As the session drew to a close, Kitagawa invited each panelist to offer brief closing reflections. Jones urged the audience to reject the “inevitability myth,” recalling that humanity has previously declined dangerous technologies such as human cloning, partly through the moral leverage of bodies like the Holy See, and called for systematic global governance with faith groups at the table.
“Certain things might be inevitable—death and taxes—but artificial superintelligence is not inevitable.”
Kalman framed AI as part of an unfolding reckoning with addiction and dependency, like society’s slow recognition of the harms of tobacco and gambling, and warned it can empower individual bad actors to cause outsized harm. Scammell returned to the inner life, suggesting the most radical response to AI anxiety may be to pause and act from love rather than urgency—because personal transformation, in his view, is the ground of any larger change.
Kitagawa closed by noting that several developers now command resources greater than many governments, and that AI’s future must not be dictated by profit alone. AI must enhance rather than diminish humanity, she said, echoing the encyclical’s conviction that human limitation can itself be a source of flourishing. She encouraged attendees to read the Pro-Human AI Declaration, which IF20 has joined, and announced that the series continues a week later, on Thursday, June 25, with a webinar on AI and translation.
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JoAnne Wadsworth is a Communications Consultant for the G20 Interfaith Forum Association and Editor of the Viewpoints Blog, IF20’s platform for commentary at the intersection of faith and global policy. She has covered the work of the Forum across multiple G20 cycles, producing summaries, articles, and editorial content that bring the voices of interfaith leaders and scholars to a broader audience. Her writing engages with topics spanning environmental governance, religious freedom, anti-racism, and the role of faith in multilateral policy processes. She is based in the United States.