Artificial intelligence in the workplace has employers grappling with a new legal issue: whether to accommodate employees seeking exemptions from using the technology because of their religion.
Companies should seriously consider such requests, especially after a recent US Supreme Court ruling lowering the threshold for approving religious accommodation bids, law professors and labor attorneys said.
Ever expanding AI capacities mean use cases that are inconceivable today may be tangible within six months, making employers’ consideration of accommodations an evolving question, said Whittney Barth, executive director of the Emory University Center for the Study of Law and Religion.
“Both religion and technology are dynamic, so the possibilities are numerous,” Barth said.
About 50 to 55% of jobs in the US will be reshaped by AI in the next two to three years, meaning workers will retain similar roles but face new expectations for the work they produce, according to a recent report published by the Boston Consulting Group.
Statements that faith groups and religious leaders are releasing about AI in the workplace could influence potential religious accommodations, Barth said.
The Vatican last year issued formal AI guidance for Catholic institutions that emphasized “moral responsibility grounded in the dignity and vocation of the human person.” AI should “never degrade creativity or reduce workers to mere ‘cogs in a machine,’” the guidance said.
The Southern Baptist Church in...
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