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Paper short abstract

This paper combines Jan Assmann's political theology with Gilbert Simondon's philosophy of technology to reveal the theological basis of understanding AI as a collaborator. I examine the ritual through which AI transforms from a product of IT-work into a force reshaping the field.

Paper long abstract

This paper develops the concept of technotheology to analyze how IT specialists make sense of AI's transformation of their professional field. Combining Jan Assmann's political theology — particularly his work on the total religions — with Gilbert Simondon's philosophy of technology (where religion is the way the world affects the self, while technology is the means of impacting the world), I examine how it happens that IT workers perceive AI as a collaborator rather than merely a tool.

The empirical part emerges from ongoing research on Russian IT specialists. AI systems, originally products of their labor, increasingly become forces redefining professional boundaries, skills, and identities. Drawing on LDA and controversies analysis of professional forums (Habr) and in-depth interviews, I investigate how specialists construct AI's agency through rituals. The theoretical framework reveals how technological change is framed through categories of the sacred: anxieties about replacement, narratives of salvation through AI adoption, and purification rituals distinguishing "proper" from "improper" use.

This approach moves beyond instrumental understandings of human-AI collaboration by showing how technotheological patterns structure professional sensemaking. My hypothesis here is yet to be examined. However, I suggest that the radical temporal shift of obeying the command (by computer) is a key feature of the transformation process.

The paper contributes to STS and organization studies by proposing technotheology as a lens for understanding how professional communities negotiate technological transformations — not merely through skill adaptation but through meaning-making practices that recast technology as both product and producer of their world.