New academic release: Coeckelbergh

Philosopher Mark Coeckelbergh’s new book, *Artificial Religion*, was released by MIT Press on April 14, 2026. (mitpress.mit.edu) MIT Press lists the paperback at $30, 210 pages, with the subtitle *On AI, Myth, and Power*. The publisher says the book examines how ideas about artificial intelligence draw on “Western religious culture” and “existential aspirations.” (mitpress.mit.edu) Coeckelbergh is a professor of philosophy of media and technology at the University of Vienna and an ERA Chair at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, according to his MIT Press author page. MIT Press also lists earlier books by him including *AI Ethics*, *Robot Ethics*, and *Why AI Undermines Democracy and What to Do About It*. (mitpress.mit.edu) The basic idea behind the new book is straightforward: some arguments about artificial intelligence work less like engineering claims and more like stories about salvation, destiny, and human transcendence. MIT Press says Coeckelbergh traces links between machine history, Western religious narratives, political questions, and human needs. (mitpress.mit.edu) That framing lands in an artificial intelligence debate still crowded with talk about superintelligence, existential risk, and machine agency. MIT Press says the book focuses not only on technical limits and the power of big technology companies, but also on the deeper “grammar” shaping how the West imagines artificial intelligence. (mitpress.mit.edu) The comparison between artificial intelligence culture and religion is not new, but it has become more visible in public debate over the past decade. In a 2024 MIT Press Reader essay, Greg Epstein wrote that the technology world’s fixation on artificial intelligence has produced beliefs and rituals that resemble religion, and pointed to Anthony Levandowski’s “Way of the Future” church as a concrete example. (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu) Coeckelbergh has been working in that territory for years. His publication list includes a 2010 article titled “The Spirit in the Network” and later work on the “grammars of AI,” showing that the new book extends a longer line of research rather than opening a new subject for him. (coeckelbergh.net; coeckelbergh.net) MIT Press’s own copy makes the argument in political as well as cultural terms. It says the book aims to shed “critical light on the power of AI,” suggesting the target is not only belief itself but the institutions and companies that benefit when artificial intelligence is treated as more than a tool. (mitpress.mit.edu) The release gives Coeckelbergh another MIT Press title in a catalog that already includes his books on artificial intelligence ethics and robot ethics. This time, the question is less what machines can do than why people keep imagining them in terms once reserved for gods. (mitpress.mit.edu; mitpress.mit.edu; mitpress.mit.edu)