Religious Exemption from using AI

If you have an ethic of avoiding harm to the environment and other people, AI and its associated requirement for data processing centres which guzzle water and electricity, and slave labour (or very poorly-paid labour) to mine the minerals needed for the devices it runs on, definitely qualifies as the sort of harm that we would wish to avoid.

Could Pagans get an exemption?

If you can demonstrate that your objection to using AI stems from your deeply-held beliefs about the environment and ethics, you could probably get an exemption on religious grounds from using AI.

If you are writing a request for an exemption, you would need to include evidence that Pagans have an ethic of protecting the environment and avoiding harm through exploitation, together with examples of how you put those ethics into practice in your personal life, and how use of AI would violate your ethical principles.

A Unitarian Universalist has been granted an exemption

Opposed to using AI for her software-engineering job, Erin Maus secured something of a miracle from her employer: a religious exemption.

Maus, a Unitarian Universalist, said she proposed the special treatment in April, citing environmental and ethical objections to AI that don’t align with her religious beliefs. She also said she consulted an employment lawyer and her local chapter’s minister to help make her case.

A UU software developer won a religious exemption from using AI at work. The Pope’s encyclical could fuel similar appeals.

The Unitarians & UUs have been consistently anti-oppression – the Universalists ordained their first woman minister in 1860, the Unitarians ordained their first woman minister in 1904. In 1970, they officially started welcoming LGBTQ+ people to UU churches (same in the UK and Canada as far as I know), and in 1977, agreed to start ordaining LGBTQ+ ministers. They were way ahead of the curve.

In the USA, Unitarians & Universalists merged in 1961. In the UK and Canada, they’re just called Unitarians.