Religion and AI 

Professor Beth Singler is the Assistant Professor in Digital Religion(s) at the University of Zurich (UZH). She is the Co-Director of the University Research Priority Programme (URPP) in Digital Religion(s), a Director of the Digital Society Initiative, and Co-Lead of the MEEET-Lab. Prior to joining UZH she was the Junior Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, after being the post-doctoral Research Associate on the “Human Identity in an age of Nearly-Human Machines” project at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. 

Beth explores the social, ethical, philosophical and religious implications of advances in Artificial Intelligence and robotics. In 2024, she published two books on religion and AI, titled The Cambridge Companion to Religion and AI (co-edited with Fraser Watts) and Religion and AI: An Introduction.

She was also one of the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 – the list of the most influential people in various fields – in both 2017 and 2018. In 2020 she was one of the 21 to Watch – the top 21 entrepreneurs, inventions, and thinkers in the East of England. In 2021 she won the Digital Religion Research Award and became a fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion. 

Vivian Schiller joined the Aspen Institute in January 2020 as Executive Director of Aspen Digital, which empowers policymakers, civic organizations, companies, and the public to be responsible stewards of technology and media in the service of an informed, just, and equitable world.

A longtime executive at the intersection of journalism, media and technology, Schiller has held executive roles at some of the most respected media organizations in the world. Those include: President and CEO of NPR; Global Chair of News at Twitter; General Manager of NYTimes.com; Chief Digital Officer of NBC News; Chief of the Discovery Times Channel, a joint venture of The New York Times and Discovery Communications; and Head of CNN documentary and long form divisions. Documentaries and series produced under her auspices earned multiple honors, including three Peabody Awards, four Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Awards, and dozens of Emmys.

Schiller is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; and a Director of the Scott Trust, which owns The Guardian.