Value-Sensitive AI for Prayer: Balancing the Agencies Between Human and AI Agents in Spiritual Context

TL;DR

This paper explores how AI can influence prayer experiences, emphasizing the importance of preserving authenticity and user agency in AI-assisted spiritual practices through conceptual design and reflection.

Contribution

It introduces four value-sensitive AI system concepts for prayer, highlighting the need to maintain authenticity and agency in AI-assisted spiritual experiences.

Findings

AI presence can diminish perceived authenticity in prayer.

Maintaining user agency is crucial for meaningful AI-assisted prayer.

Designs should leverage AI's inexplicability to support personal meaning.

Abstract

We present four conceptual value-sensitive AI systems to examine how the presence of AI could influence praying experiences. Drawing on key values and practices associated with praying identified through a diary study, we designed AI systems intended to "assist" prayer practices. These designs were presented to participants through speculative design workbooks, serving as provocations to co-reflect on how the intervention of AI systems might shape their praying experiences. Our findings suggest that a sense of authenticity (or feeling a genuine connection to the divine) is a crucial value, while the presence of AI was often perceived as diminishing this authenticity, particularly when AI assumed too much agency in guiding praying practices. Based on our findings, we argue that AI system designs for deeply value-laden experiences should preserve users' agency in shaping their own experiences by maintaining interpretive openness, perhaps by leveraging AI's inexplicability as a resource for personal meaning-making or by recognizing non-use of AI as a legitimate design choice.