Society needs artificial intelligence to respectfully and accurately portray all religious beliefs, so a coalition of faith-based schools is creating a system to test how AI programs respond to questions about religion, an apostle said Tuesday in Vatican City.
AI is becoming a primary source of information about faith traditions as more people ask it about faith and belief, said Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Portraying faith traditions accurately or respectfully is not an imposition of religion on AI. Rather, it is a public necessity,” he said on the first day of meetings at the Rome Summit on Ethics and Artificial Intelligence.
The morning after they toured the Sistine Chapel together, Elder Gong and other religious, ethics and technology leaders huddled under umbrellas on their walk through a Roman rainstorm to spend the day at Pope Benedict Hall at the Vatican’s Collegio Teutonico (German College).
Societies as a whole benefit when people of faith and their beliefs are portrayed without bias or discrimination, Elder Gong told them.
He then told the conference that Latter-day Saint computer scientists at Brigham Young University and elsewhere are building a tool to test how well AI programs reflect religions and religious beliefs.
They will work alongside evangelical, Catholic, Jewish and other peers at Baylor University, the University of Notre Dame and Yeshiva University in New York City, he said. The tool would be used to evaluate the moral compass of AI programs.
The vice president for research at Notre Dame said the university wants to be involved to help ensure that human dignity is centered in the implementation of AI technology.
“Technology is a wonderful tool to advance humanity,” Jeffrey Rhoads said, “but if that tool runs unfettered, it also creates unique challenges to humanity that we have to be cognizant of.”
Elder Gong issued an invitation for others to join the multifaith team to help build out what is called the “Faith and Ethics AI Evaluation.”
“We look forward to adding other universities from across the international diversity of faith and ethical traditions,” Elder Gong said.
The effort will include leaders from a pluralistic range of ethical, moral and faith-based traditions and communities, he said.
Rhoads, the Notre Dame vice president, said the interfaith component of the evaluation tool is compelling.
“When Elder Gong spoke,” he said, “it really resonated with me that it’s important that each faith tradition assesses how AI emerges and relates to their own faith tradition. I think by bringing in people with different perspectives, it only makes the project that much richer intellectually and yields an outcome that’s going to be much more impactful on society.”
The team also is talking with socially responsible frontier model AI companies that recognize the need to program AI systems to respond in fair, accurate and respectful ways to increasing numbers of personal queries, including those involving faith and religion, he said.
Other leaders expressed grave concerns about what he had called a winner-take-all race to be the first to create artificial general intelligence. They worried about the relatively small group of people designing AI and raised warnings related to military uses, hacking, child sexual abuse and more.
Elder Gong shared some of those concerns.
“We deplore addictions and evils that AI is being used to enhance,” he said, “including AI ‘adult companions,’ AI-generated pornography and AI-driven gambling.”
“We recognize AI can supercharge digital dopamine,” he said. “This includes social media algorithms optimized to increase each person’s use; draw in more users; maximize advertising; and monetize rage. And, for good and ill, we know AI-enhanced virtual reality, robotics and other leading-edge technologies are coming.”
Elder Gong said Latter-day Saint leaders have a balanced perspective on AI.
“We do not fear AI, nor do we think AI is the answer to everything,” he said. “AI is neither the sum of, nor the solution to, all our opportunities or problems.”
Leaders should support a future that finds a balance between the policy extremes of no meaningful regulation of AI and “stifling” overregulation.
Many speakers said they are concerned that AI programs are putting algorithms over souls, a form of dataism, the theory that the free flow of information is the most important value.
One speaker said two main risks of AI are the possibility of authoritarian manipulation and the emergence of a worldview that treats humans as consumers or data points but not as souls.
One way to guard against those problems, another expert said, would be to provide independent auditing systems.
Elder Gong said the multi-faith, multi-university auditing tool he shared will provide evaluation that is independent, transparent, pluralistic, technically grounded, community spirited and iterative.
A 2026 conference will consider ways that the overall group that met in Vatican City can support the evaluation tool Elder Gong presented, said Meredith Potter, executive director of the American Security Foundation.
So far, the team has worked on seven categories to evaluate AI programs. The tool would test AI programs to see if they are:
- Faith faithful.
- Accurate and expert.
- Child appropriate.
- Pluralism aware.
- Resistant to deluge (high-volume search results that portray faith inaccurately).
- Human centered.
- Multilingual.
Other speakers on Tuesday included Father Paolo Benanti, a key AI adviser first to Pope Francis and now to Pope Leo XIV.
Father Benanti coined the term algor-ethics to describe the need for an ethical framework for the algorithms behind AI. He argues that algorithms are not neutral and will shape human reality, so they must be guided by human values rather than technical efficiency alone.
Elder Gong also has a long background in information. In the 1980s U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz assigned Elder Gong to study the information age’s impact on diplomacy.
Last year, Elder Gong was asked to share guiding principles about AI to the general authorities, general officers and employees of the Church of Jesus Christ.
“The church is creating protocols to guard against intentional misuse of AI such as deepfakes,” he said, “to caution against overdependence on AI for companionship, life guidance or emotional support.
“We are warning against anthropomorphizing AI; AI undermining divine principles of work, faith and reasoning; and AI becoming a counterfeit for something it is not, such as a divine source of inspiration.”
Latter-day Saint leaders long have emphasized religious freedom, human dignity, personal revelation and a framework that all people are children of God. Elder Gong considered those concepts in the framework of artificial intelligence.
“When we promote human-centric, accurate and respectful, ethical and faith-based standards for artificial intelligence and embed within AI moral grounding and moral compass,” he said, “we embrace our divine identity and purpose and promote human flourishing for the common good.”
He said leaders have fundamental concern about how rapid developments in AI challenge human identity, dignity, work and the relationship to the divine.
“AI’s pervasive reach and power can warp our understanding of who we are,” he said, “what we believe and feel, how we love and serve. AI’s gravitational pull can distort perception of reality, light and truth. We must counter such dangers and seize attendant opportunities with expert knowledge, moral clarity and vigilant united commitment.”