Conscious, embodied, emotional?! - AI as a challenge for theological anthropology

• Applicant: Dr. Caroline Helmus
• Subject Area: Roman Catholic Theology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 531016379

The primary goal of this research project is to show, examine and critically constructively integrate the relevance of AI research with a special focus on behavior-based AI with its body and emotion concepts for theological anthropology. This requires (1) a detailed reconstruction of the heterogeneous AI-based research approaches and a classification of their philosophical and anthropological basic assumptions. With this systematization, a research gap can be closed in a further step by introducing the latest behavior-based AI research. Because the previous fundamental theological or religious-philosophical reception of AI only deals with the possibility of a computational generation of mental abilities. In a second (2) step, an interlocking reception should take place. Taking into account bodily and consciousness-theoretical approaches within theological anthropology, AI research is critically classified, such as the anthropomorphization of AI and its functionalization of mental and physical abilities. In terms of mutual enrichment, a critical examination of the relevance of these approaches for theological-anthropological discourses on embodiment takes place at the same time. In the knowledge of the epistemic conditionality that underlies every self-image and worldview, the constructive discourse potential of the respective anthropological concepts should be asked reciprocally, in order not only to highlight the respective critical gaps, but also to ask about the enriching potentials in an interlacing of perspectives . In the sense of an interdisciplinary theological anthropology, it is important here to show the relevance of technology for humans and thus not only to counteract the desideratum of the relational reference to technology, but also to turn to already practiced technological concepts of the body. The scientific objective of the research project is characterized by the following key questions: 1. What anthropological insights can be drawn from an investigation of (behaviour-based) artificial intelligence with a special focus on the research fields of embodied robotics and affective computing, using the example of the robots Cog and NAO? 2. What are the consequences of the discourse for body-phenomenological approaches of a theological anthropology with behavior-based AI, with a special focus on: a. consciousness understanding? b. body understanding? c. emotion understanding?

• DFG Programme: Research Grants