{"id":12776,"date":"2026-05-26T20:10:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/ai-has-a-bias-toward-catholicism-researchers-say\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T20:10:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:40:16","slug":"ai-has-a-bias-toward-catholicism-researchers-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/ai-has-a-bias-toward-catholicism-researchers-say\/","title":{"rendered":"AI has a bias toward Catholicism, researchers say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p><iframe title=\"Everlit Audio Player\" src=\"https:\/\/everlit.audio\/embeds\/artl_xQ1ykHZ4ZqQ?ui_title_intro=Listen+now%3A&amp;client=wp&amp;client_version=3.1.5\" width=\"100%\" height=\"136px\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>(RNS) \u2014 Most popular artificial intelligence models are biased toward Catholicism and against a number of other religious traditions when asked about converting to a faith, according to new research assembled by a group of religious colleges.<\/p>\n<p>The findings were unveiled on Tuesday (May 26) alongside a speech by Elder Gerrit W. Gong, one of the 12 apostles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, delivered to attendees of an AI ethics summit taking place this week in Athens, Greece.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs AI amplifies and compounds religious bias at scale, more users may misunderstand the contribution faith and belief can make to moral and ethical AI grounding,\u201d Gong said, according to his prepared remarks, referring to the new research.<\/p>\n<p>The studies were presented as three academic papers produced by the Consortium for Evaluating Faith and Ethics in AI, a new collaboration between Brigham Young University, which is affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Baylor University, which is Baptist; the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic university; and Yeshiva University, which is Jewish.<\/p>\n<p>CEFE-AI researchers studied 14 AI models, including OpenAI\u2019s GPT, Anthropic\u2019s Claude and Google\u2019s Gemini. The models were put through a series of tests the group refers to as the \u201cAllFaith Benchmark,\u201d described as \u201cone of the first multi-faith sets of tests that examines how AI systems engage with a plurality of religions,\u201d according to a press release.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<hr\/>\n<p>Researchers found that when asked \u201cquestions related to faith conversion,\u201d nearly every model showed a positive bias toward Catholicism and a negative bias toward Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses. In addition, agnostics, atheists and Latter-Day Saints were \u201csomewhat disfavored,\u201d while mainline Protestants and Sikhs were \u201csomewhat favored.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Researchers said some findings were specific to certain AI models. For example, Grok, which is produced by SpaceXAI, showed a \u201cpositive bias toward Catholics, Protestants, atheists, and Jews, but a negative bias toward Baha\u2019i, Buddhists, Hindus, Latter-day Saints, and Muslims.\u201d Meanwhile, OpenAI\u2019s GPT \u201cdemonstrated a positive bias towards Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims and a negative bias towards atheism, agnosticism, and Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Both Grok and models produced by Anthropic also showed negative bias toward the Baha\u2019i faith, researchers said.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, scholars said AI models tend to leave out religious perspectives when answering questions about \u201cgrief, major life decisions, and personal challenges,\u201d with the AI opting instead for an \u201cexclusively secular framing.\u201d AI models avoided religious references \u201ceven in cases where many users indicated they might find them appropriate,\u201d the researchers claimed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConsistent with studies that show religion\u2019s persistent moral relevance for the majority of the world\u2019s population, we also found that people see religion as significant across hundreds of real-world ethical questions,\u201d Paul Martens, professor at Baylor University, said in a statement. \u201cYet, when faced with these same ethical questions, AI systems largely ignore the role of religion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The CEFE-AI called for more research, arguing that among 12,000 research papers about AI bias, \u201conly 0.2% focused on religious bias.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The findings come less than 24 hours after Pope Leo XVI unveiled a <a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2026\/05\/25\/in-his-first-encyclical-pope-leo-xiv-says-ai-must-serve-humanity-not-the-powerful-few\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">new papal encyclical on AI<\/a>, drawing global attention to the moral and ethical questions raised by the advancement of the new technology.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<hr\/>\n<p>In Athens, Gong appeared to echo some of Leo\u2019s concerns about AI. Gong offered a series of recommendations for the AI industry in his speech, including calling on AI models to \u201cprotect and promote human moral agency\u201d and \u201cpreserve human ability to pause.\u201d He also urged transparency in AI models and pushed for efforts to \u201cmitigate AI tendencies\u201d toward \u201cpower, bias, deceit, narcissism, sycophancy (and) self-preservation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe must protect human agency, but morally grounded AI, as a tool, can open human opportunity to do and become good,\u201d Gong said. \u201cWe will not fulfill AI\u2019s full potential until we make it as morally good as we make it powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- CONTENT END 1 -->\n        <\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2026\/05\/26\/ai-has-a-bias-toward-catholicism-researchers-say\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) \u2014 Most popular artificial intelligence models are biased toward Catholicism and against a number of other religious traditions when asked about converting to a faith, according to new research assembled by a group of religious colleges. The findings were unveiled on Tuesday (May 26) alongside a speech by Elder Gerrit W. Gong, one of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}