Can a Mystical Experience be Emulated by AI-Generated Rationality?
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractArtificial intelligence can evoke feelings of sacredness in people, but only under certain conditions. Spiritual believers report lower perceived sacredness, service quality, and trust when they know AI is involved, while non-believers show no such difference. Oral conversation enhances perceived sacredness compared to touch-screen interaction. The type of question asked—open-ended or closed-ended—does not significantly affect sacred experiences. AI cannot possess spirituality but can effectively evoke subjective sacred experiences through carefully designed interaction contexts.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Sequential experiments |
|---|---|
| Population | Spiritual believers and non-believers |
| Intervention | AI-assisted tarot divination |
| Key finding | AI can evoke subjective sacred experiences through carefully designed interaction contexts, though spiritual believers report lower perceived sacredness when aware of AI involvement. |
Abstract
This study investigates whether artificial intelligence can emulate human mystical experiences through algorithmic rationality, focusing specifically on the generative mechanisms of “Perceived Sacredness” within AI-assisted tarot divination. Grounded in the original “Triadic Framework for Human-AI Spiritual Interaction,” three sequential experiments systematically examine how sacredness perception is shaped by three contextual layers: “who speaks” (agent subjectivity), “how it speaks” (interaction modality), and “what is spoken” (question typology). Study 1 reveals that spiritual believers report significantly lower perceived sacredness, service quality, and trust when explicitly informed that AI is involved, whereas non-believers show no such difference—supporting the “in-group bias” hypothesis. Study 2 demonstrates that oral conversation significantly enhances perceived sacredness compared to touch-screen interaction, aligning with Media Richness and Social Presence theories. Study 3 found no significant difference between open-ended and closed-ended questions in eliciting sacred experiences. Collectively, while AI cannot intrinsically “possess” spirituality, it can effectively “evoke” subjective sacred experiences through carefully designed interaction contexts. This research provides empirical grounding for understanding the reconfiguration of spiritual experience in the technological age and offers critical implications for the ethical and experiential design of AI in spiritual service domains.