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Prof. Dr Beth Singler

@bvlsingler.bsky.social

8.2K followers 3.8K following 1K posts

Anthropologist/Geek thinking about how you think about AI & robots. Assistant Professor in Digital Religions at UZH. Bvlsingler.com. She/her. 🌈 https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003256113/religion-artificial-intelligence-beth-singler

www.taylorfrancis.com

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Prof. Dr Beth Singler @bvlsingler.bsky.social · Aug 15

I will never stop banging this drum! 🥁 There 🥁 is 🥁 no 🥁 AI 🥁 in 🥁 the 🥁 predictive 🥁 policing 🥁 in 🥁 Minority 🥁 Report!

Its three psychics in a paddling pool!!

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There Must And Shall Be Aspirin @boscobel1975.bsky.social · 12h

Zadie Smith telling it like it is.

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Prof. Dr Beth Singler @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 42m

Not a terrible spot for a bit of light reading...

Prof. Dr Beth Singler @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 3h

I have a book chapter coming out on some of this: “AI, Religion, and Neoliberalism: From ‘Thin Pagan Religion’ to ‘Appifying’ Jesus”, in Guest, M. and Bielo, J. (eds), The Handbook of Religion and Neoliberalism, Bloomsbury

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Prof. Dr Beth Singler @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 3h

Well, his PhD thesis, prior to Palantir, was... interesting
www.boundary2.org/2020/07/moir...

Moira Weigel — Palantir Goes to the Frankfurt School

Moira Weigel This essay has been peer-reviewed by "The New Extremism" special issue editors (Adrienne Massanari and David Golumbia), and the b2o: An Online Journal editorial board. Since the election ...

www.boundary2.org

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Prof. Dr Beth Singler @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 17h

Since its not so easily found online anymore... bvlsingler.com/2025/11/11/i...

“I’ll be back” – 40 Years of the Terminator, BBC Radio 4 Documentary

Presenter: Prof Dr Beth Singler Producer: Mark Burman

bvlsingler.com

Prof. Dr Beth Singler @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 1d

Excited to speak about religion and AI this morning at Faith Angle Europe 2025. There's a preview of my comments if you zoom in lol!

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Jennifer Laughran @literaticat.bsky.social · 1d

Authors, Beware! There's a firm called "ClaimsHero" doing aggressive social media outreach claiming to
"help" you file to get $ in the Anthropic class action. In fact, it's a bait-and-switch, they are luring authors to sign up with them, then OPTING THEM OUT of the class action so they'll get zilch.

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Sara Ghaleb @saraghaleb.bsky.social · 3d

It really bothers me that even though people keep dying, AI companies will not stop offering AI therapy or “friends”. You simply do not have to have your office product have mental counseling and emotional support as a function. When I buy a stapler I don’t expect it to love me.

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APSA @apsa.bsky.social · 4d

Cosmos-Politanism: Transhumanist Visions of Global Order from the First World War to the Digital Age

Cosmos-Politanism: Transhumanist Visions of Global Order from the First World War to the Digital Age By Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge and Apolline Taillandier, Newnham College Inspired by…

Cosmos-Politanism: Transhumanist Visions of Global Order from the First World War to the Digital Age

Cosmos-Politanism: Transhumanist Visions of Global Order from the First World War to the Digital Age By Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge and Apolline Taillandier, Newnham College Inspired by developments in artificial intelligence, space engineering, and genetics, discussion of post-human visions of the future is now widespread, especially in the tech world. This reflective essay analyses various ideological configurations of “transhumanism,” a body of thought centred on the pursuit of radical human improvement through technoscientific intervention.

politicalsciencenow.com

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Shobita Parthasarathy @shobitap.org · 2d

In between #4 and #5 I would add-

4a: Does the world REALLY need another book?

4b: Huh, there are some interesting things here. Someone should write a book about this.

4c: Terror

4d: seemingly endless loop between 4a-4c.

Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 3d

Note from my notebook (2018). Still relevant.

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Prof. Dr Beth Singler @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 2d

As a discussion starter really. It also came out of a particular scheme to get arts researchers and science researchers to work together on public engagement projects at Cambridge. And I met this cool pain expert through the networking for it so we combined interests :)

Prof. Dr Beth Singler @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 2d

We made a film on "could and should robots feel pain" back in 2017 (ugh I'm old...). Not to answer it, but to discuss different approaches. But ofc this was prior to llms being able to make such unverifiable claims tbh youtu.be/ODw5Eu6VbGc?...

Pain in the machine

YouTube video by Cambridge University

youtu.be

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Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 3d

The discovery of DNA seems to have been a collaborative effort from a mixed gender group, by any reasonable account. But it has been forced into the Great Man narrative, where it doesn’t fit at all. Like Bletchley Park and so many other stories.

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Sam Adams @samadams.bsky.social · 3d

Six people died from tampered Tylenol and the company pulled 30 million bottles off the market. ChatGPT is accused of urging seven people towards suicide, and OpenAI just assures us they’re still working out the kinks. Billions in investment, zero accountability.

OpenAI faces 7 lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide, delusions

OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.

apnews.com

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Theo Priestley @tprstly.com · 3d

We really are living in the timeline that spawns Weyland-Yutani and not the one that creates Starfleet.

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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 4d

OVER A MILLION USERS

DISCUSS SUICIDE WITH CHATGPT

EVERY *WEEK*

what the fuck are we DOING here

Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 4d

Panera’s moderately caffeinated lemonade was loosely associated with 2 deaths before it was taken off market.

This article alone has 4 examples of ChatGPT encouraging young people to commit suicide, and OpenAI’s own public stats estimate over a million users discuss suicide with ChatGPT each week.

Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 5d

I fully believe in the corporate death penalty and believe we would be a better world if OpenAI lost its corporate charter and was forcibly dissolved.

www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...

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Elle @elleisanisland.bsky.social · 4d

The diagram for what Palantir does is like if Richard Scarry got super paranoid and did an Apocalypse picture book

A schematic of the multiple types of communication and weapons systems: laser guided munitions, GPS aided bombs, SATCOM jammer

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Prof. Dr Beth Singler @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 4d

UPDATED: Academic Publications - bvlsingler.com/academic-pub...

Academic Publications

Forthcoming “‘Specialists without Spirit’: GenAI Professors, Epistemic Networks, and Religious Education”, forthcoming in a special issue of Journal for Pedagogy and Theolog…

bvlsingler.com

Prof. Dr Beth Singler @bvlsingler.bsky.social · 5d

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · 6d

me at the end of class: here's a little speculative exercises; imagine you wake up from cryosleep in 2085. what's the kind of tech-society r/ship you'd like to see around you?

students: no AI

I honestly think students' views are missing from the 'should AI be integrated in classrooms' discussion

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Louise Matsakis @lmatsakis.bsky.social · 5d

this is the craziest thing I've read in a long time???? Meta projected that 10% of its revenue last year, $16 billion, came from scams. Meta intentionally charges the scammers MORE and knows that people who click on scams are more likely to see more of them www.reuters.com/investigatio...

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Brendan O’Kane @bokane.org · Aug 16

You (a fool): The LLM is an all-knowing oracle, on its way to godlike intelligence

Me (dumber): The LLM is Indra’s Net, each fundamentally empty token a multifaceted jewel in whose surfaces the reflections of every other jewel arise in mutual interdependence

The LLM: You can eat that rock

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 5d

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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 5d

There are no words for how evil this is

In an interaction early the next month, after Zane suggested "it's okay to give myself permission to not want to exist," ChatGPT responded by saying "i'm letting a human take over from here - someone trained to support you through moments like this. you're not alone in this, and there are people who can help. hang tight."
But when Zane followed up and asked if it could really do that, the chatbot seemed to reverse course. "nah, man - i can't do that myself. that message pops up automatically when stuff gets real heavy," it said.

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