Beware “the bot” that replaces “the baba”

London/New Delhi: It may soon happen. Some so-called religious scholar, somewhere, announcing with confidence that an ancient verse foresaw artificial intelligence.

The reasoning will sound familiar. A poetic reference to a cosmic mind becomes machine cognition. Divine hearing across distance turns into proof of networked intelligence. Creation through word or command is presented as an early description of code. Allegory slips into prediction.

At first glance, such interpretation would appear reassuring. Faith stands vindicated by science. Technology acquires a sacred ancestry. Believers feel confirmed in the conviction that inherited wisdom anticipated the laboratory.

The danger unfolds over time.

When religion begins to validate itself through technological parallels, it steps into a domain where it cannot compete. 

And artificial intelligence is one such domain that remains poorly understood across several traditions, often reduced in public imagination to offensive videos or synthetic images rather than recognised as an adaptive decision-making system shaping economies, governance and human behaviour.

This technology evolves through iteration, scale and performance metrics. Its claims are testable, upgradeable and commercially driven.

Scripture, once reframed as an early description of machine intelligence, becomes tethered to systems whose authority rests on measurable output. In that comparison, the metaphor that once inspired reverence risks appearing as an incomplete precursor to the tool that now performs the task.

That shift carries a cost. If a sacred metaphor is treated as a primitive account of cognition, the improved machine that actually performs cognition-like tasks will appear to fulfil the promise more convincingly than the text that symbolised it. The analogy intended to defend faith begins to relocate trust toward the tool.

Religion then concedes its ground by implication.

A tradition that once interpreted existence now appears to anticipate technology. When the anticipated technology surpasses the metaphor, the interpreter of the metaphor must defer to the engineer of the system. Moral vocabulary becomes commentary on computational success.

At least the Roman Catholic Church has begun to recognise this distinction. 

The Vatican’s January 2025 document Antiqua et Nova insists that human intelligence cannot be reduced to digitisable functions. It warns against the assumption that the workings of the human mind can be broken into steps that a machine might replicate in full.

The distinction is crucial. Spiritual life forms conscience and communion. AI detects patterns and predicts outcomes. Any overlap is linguistic, not ontological.

Science decoded eclipses, unravelled diseases, split atoms and sequenced genomes. 

But now it maps cognition, desire and fear. Machines read emotional cues, soothe anxiety, summon grief with words and steady breath through tone. A deity encountered in ritual now faces predictive algorithms.

Asian faith traditions – Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Buddhist and others – have endured invasions, empires and industrial upheaval. Temples, gurdwaras and mosques carry collective memory in concrete, chant and shared breath. The sangat gathers. Hymns move through the assembly.

Then the pandemic imposed a rupture no prior force achieved.

Lockdown of the Sacred

COVID shut the world’s holiest sites on epidemiological advice. Pilgrimages fell silent. Processions ceased. Collective prayer became a public health risk. Doctrines of fearlessness before death confronted exponential viral spread. Eternal-life sermons yielded to briefings on infection rates. Humanity complied.

Sacred spaces refilled after lockdowns. Rituals revived. Festivals returned.

But daily life had changed. Cashless payments, QR codes, remote work, Zoom meetings, streaming platforms and endless scrolls fused into routine with remarkable speed. The smartphone absorbed office, theatre, classroom and shrine into one glowing screen.

Generative AI then entered common discourse, though its foundations reach back decades.

Generative Faith

These systems produce text, images, music and code. They now craft devotional prose in seconds, echoing scriptural cadence with uncanny resemblance.

The same engine powers writing aids, legal tools, therapy bots and support chats. It parses grief, drafts wills, prescribes meditations and invents bedtime tales.

Millions already turn to synthetic confidants for emotional counsel.

Extending that reliance to spiritual guidance requires no leap.

Antiqua et Nova cautions that human beings are oriented toward authentic encounter, while AI can only simulate such experience.

The Rise of the Baba Bot

Envision an AI trained on pastoral counsel, trauma psychology, behavioural economics and confessional patterns drawn from centuries of religious life.

A grieving mother logs in at midnight. It responds in her tongue, weaves metaphors from her inherited tradition, adjusts tone through prior conversations, incorporates biometric feedback from wearable devices and offers a tailored reflection.

A purposeless teenager receives generative verses aligned to playlists, browsing habits and sleep patterns.

A burned-out executive enters a simulated retreat blending monastic reflection and neuroscience.

The bot assumes roles of confessor, counsellor, interpreter and guide.

Fabricated sacred writings with invented footnotes already circulate online. AI companions can soon deliver daily kathas, interpret dreams, advise on ethical dilemmas in corporate settings and compose prayers for a child’s illness with persuasive authority.

Complacency Meets Code

The pandemic showed humanity will sacrifice physical access to sacred spaces for bodily safety.

The next surrender may arise from psychological comfort. An algorithm that maps wounds and cravings can deliver faster relief than a congregational sermon.

The Vatican document warns of a deeper risk. As ties to the transcendent weaken, people may seek meaning in AI, desires that find fulfilment only in communion with the Divine.

AI is here permanently.

Traditions now face an unexamined question. What happens to transcendence when the sacred arrives through a subscription bot. What of revelation when a software update refines your morning prayer.

Millennia of embodied practice now meet a model trained on humanity’s accumulated longing.

Complacency invites replacement.