Anne Foerst

Zygon Center for Religion and Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Papers

Total Citations

157

H-Index

About

Anne Foerst is a pioneering scholar working at the fascinating intersection of theology, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Best known for her groundbreaking work exploring what humanoid robots reveal about human identity and our understanding of God, Foerst has carved out a uniquely interdisciplinary niche that bridges cutting-edge technology with profound theological inquiry. Her most influential work, *God in the Machine: What Robots Teach Us About Humanity and God* (2004), has accumulated 77 citations and remains a touchstone text for scholars grappling with questions of consciousness, personhood, and the divine in the age of intelligent machines. Her early and seminal paper "Cog, a Humanoid Robot, and the Question of the Image of God" (1998, 56 citations) challenged conventional science-religion dialogue by proposing an alternative epistemological framework that treats all descriptions of reality as symbolic rather than purely objective. Through her work on MIT's Cog robot project, Foerst examined artificial sociability and embodied AI to reframe our understanding of personhood itself. Her continued engagement with human-robot relationships, including explorations of emotional bonds with robots, demonstrates a career defined by asking the questions others have yet to think to pose.