Faith at the Frontiers

In this episode Barney and Austin look back over the series on A.I. and discuss their favorite takeaways, lingering questions, and what exactly it means to confront challenges to the Christian faith with Hope. We also discuss our upcoming series on Cultural Witness.

What does it mean for Christians to have hope in relation to A.I.? Are we putting our hope in the right thing? What are we hoping for? How can we have hope if the situation looks hopeless? Professor Michael Burdett guides us in answering these questions in this episode. Michael is the author of Eschatology and the Technological Future (Routledge, 2015). He has a background in Christian thinking about technology and the future, and here he applies it to A.I. specifically. We also address questions like:What kind of people do we need to be to use A.I. well?What kind of people do we need to be to create the right kind of A.I.? What vision of human flourishing should drive our production and use of A.I.?

Professor Nicholas Hayes-Mota and Dr Silvianne Aspray guide us through the insights of Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. We discuss questions like:Why is the Pope weighing in on A.I.? What vision of humanity is A.I. cultivating? How do we protect against the illusions of objectivity and of human connection?What agency do normal A.I. users have to shape how it affects our world? Is A.I. helping us to become the kind of people we were created to be?

Dr Lyndon Drake has two PhDs: one in theology and one in A.I. Now a research fellow at Oxford, he wants to help us think through chatbots in a rigorous and careful way. Let’s be conscious of the pitfalls and dangers, but let’s also explore the opportunities. Christians have been wrestling with what it means to be human for centuries, and producers of A.I. technology can benefit from those insights.Lyndon is one of the producers of the Oxford Oath on A.I., modeled after the Hippocratic Oath, to guide users and developers in how to use A.I. for the common good of humanity.

In this episode, we’re bringing the thought of Augustine into the conversation with the help of Autumn Ridenour, the author of Restlessness and Belonging: Augustinian Wisdom for the Digital Empire. We explore this concept of a digital empire for thinking about the dangers and possibilities of A.I. and social media in ways that parallel what the Roman Empire was to St Augustine.