AI and Faith Featured in The New York Times
“As we confront the question of what makes us human, let us not disregard the religions and spiritualities that make up our oldest kinds of knowledge. Whether we agree with them or not, they are our shared inheritance, part of the past, present and future of humankind.”
—Linda Kinstler, The New York Times, Sunday, July 18, 2021
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AI and Faith is a cross-spectrum consortium of faith communities and academic institutions. Its mission is to bring the fundamental values of the world’s major religions into the emerging debate on the ethical development of Artificial Intelligence and related technologies.
Faith communities, faith-related institutions, and universities in technology-centric regions like Seattle are home to many professionals, scientists, theologians, ethicists, teachers of religion, and other thought leaders who are stakeholders in the evolution of AI. AI and Faith exists as a channel for faith-based perspectives to help shape the development of AI in ways that are deeply ethical and life-affirming.
AI and Faith is also a research organization focused on better understanding the relationship between sacred texts and the millennia of additional commentary on ethics in everyday life, government, and business. We seek to better align faith-based wisdom to inform the dialog on the development in ethical AI.
We focus on how to ensure the flourishing of humanity in a world of technology while protecting and promoting:
The worth of human life and dignity of every individual
Societal justice and meaningful community
Liberty and choice
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“Ultimately, a global conversation about ethical principles for artificial intelligence will require an even bigger tent. There will need to be seats at the table not only for technologists, governments, NGOs, and educators, but for philosophers and representatives of the world’s many religions.” – Brad Smith, President, Microsoft from his book Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age
Read our latest content
AI and Ethics: Reconsidering the Rome Call for AI Ethics
The Rome Call for AI Ethics, a Vatican-led effort to establish a set of ethical principles for AI, continues to be touted as an example of technology and faith working together to put some collective guard rails around the burgeoning use of AI. While the Rome Call for...
Part 2 – Late Antiquity Christian Insights for Artificial Intelligence: An anthropological approach to discerning AI’s impact on society
In Part 1 of this essay, I explained how writing of the early Church Fathers (“patristics”) from the 4th Century CE are relevant to some of today’s important questioning about AI and society, and more specifically, AI and faith. This paper focuses on the question of...
Interviewing Distinguished UW Law Professors Anita Ramasastry and Ryan Calo about Human Rights and Tech Ethics
Anita Ramasastry (AR below) is the Henry M. Jackson Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law, and an expert and leading academic in the fields of anti-corruption and business and human rights. At the University of Washington, she directs the...
White House Artificial Intelligence Efforts Reflect Growing Global Interest
As part of this issue’s focus on a human rights approach to controlling AI-based technologies, we asked attorneys in the Seattle and Washington, DC offices of Davis Wright Tremaine (DWT) to describe the significance of a new call from President Biden’s technology...
Greffenstette Center Conference on Policies, Theologies, and Ethics of Biometric Technology
On November 4, 2021, the Duquesne University Grefenstette Center for Ethics in Science, Technology, and Law hosted an in-person and livestreamed symposium on the present and future ethics of biometric technology. The symposium featured four panels focusing on...
Conference Summary: AI and The End of the Anthropocene
On November 17, 2021, the Iliff School of Theology's Artificial Intelligence Institute hosted a virtual conversation titled “AI, Tech, and the End of the Anthropocene.” The conversation largely focused on confronting the impact of industrial technologies on the...
A brief review of COSM 2021: Paradoxes of the new world of technology
While I have no previous COSM to compare this COSM to, I find myself agreeing with Panic author Richard Vigilante, who moderated the final panel of COSM 2021, that this was the best COSM yet. To qualify his assertion, Mr. Vigilante explained that a good conference...
The Interfaith Business Network is about Business, Faith, and Social Change
The Interfaith Business Network is a new Partner of AI and Faith, working to develop a network of business school students and alumni around questions of diversity, inclusion and equity, business ethics, and faith on a pluralist basis. Angie Luo and Breanne White are...
An Interview with Wired’s Spiritual Advisor Meghan O’Gieblyn on Technology, Transhumanism, and the Afterlife
Meghan O’Gieblyn writes essays, features, and criticism for Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, Bookforum, n+1, The Point, The Believer, The Guardian, The New York Times, Paris Review Daily, and other publications. She is the recipient of three Pushcart Prizes. One...
Review of The Upswing – Can We Bridge Again?
Though Robert Putnam has served since 1979 as dean and then distinguished professor of political science at the Kennedy School at Harvard, most Americans—including me—only became aware of his keen analytical descriptions of U.S society in 2000, when he published...
How Do We Hold These Things Together?
The books arrived in my reading stack at the same time: AI 2041: 10 Visions for our Future and The Perfect Police State. So which would I read first? I chose The Perfect Police State. That order turned out to matter. Investigative journalist Geoffrey Cain’s book...
Do Digital Tools Threaten Learning, Spirituality, and Well-Being?
A 2010 book by well-known social commentator Nicholas Carr, titled The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, raises an ongoing, increasingly important question for computer science and the use of digital tools. In essence, Carr argues that extensive use...