Complexified

Spiritual Technology for the 21st Century

Complexified

Show Notes

Philip Reed-Butler, Black AI, and the future of healing

For the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about artificial intelligence. We’ve talked Vatican positioning, Silicon Valley philosophers, Catholic ethics, corporate power, doomsday language, all circling the question of who gets to shape the future these machines are confining us in.

But most of those conversations begin from the same assumption: AI is a tool built somewhere else, by someone else, to give us answers.

Productivity. Efficiency. Surveillance. Profit.

Today’s conversation starts somewhere else.

Philip Reed-Butler is a scholar, theologian and technologist at Iliff School of Theology, where he directs the AI Institute and teaches Theology and Black Posthuman Artificial Intelligence Systems. He is also the founder of the Seekr Project, a distinctly Black conversational AI project designed around introspection, healing and mental-health capacities.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More from Complexified

Oct 20, 2026

Religion has always been part of American politics.

Oct 12, 2026

Televangelist Jim Bakker is dead at 86. And whatever else can be said about him, he was a true American original.

Oct 5, 2026

Soldiers are trained for physical combat. But war also confronts them with death, killing, grief, guilt and questions of meaning.

Sep 28, 2026

Across YouTube, podcasts and church conferences, a new group of pastors and influencers is promoting an openly racist and baldly antisemitic vision of Christian America. They present themselves not as extremists, but as respectable religious leaders defending truths that others are afraid to say.

Sep 21, 2026

Republican leaders across Texas are repeatedly warning that Sharia is an urgent threat to the state- making it a rallying cry as we head into the midterm elections. The Muslim community, who has long stayed quiet, is now organizing and speaking out.

See all episodes →