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Phys.org — Social Sciences · September 30, 2026 · On the brief until October 14, 2026

Chatbots as oracles: How AI is giving new life to the ancient practice of seeking answers from inscrutable sources

Religious StudiesSociologyPsychology
THE AI ANGLE
Providing opaque guidance for moral and personal decisions

Users increasingly rely on chatbots for emotional support and ethical choices. This behavior revives ancient divination traditions where people consulted opaque sources when human judgment reached its limits. For scholars of religion and human behavior, artificial intelligence provides a modern example of authority emerging from technical obscurity.

Summary written by AI Business Lens with an AI model from the article at phys.org. It is not the article, and the publisher has not reviewed it. For publishers.

THE TEACHING ANGLE
A key question is whether computational opacity leads users to treat complex software as a moral authority.

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