We have the wind at our backs and are heading into the second half of 2023 with a strong track record of events, projects, and new collaborators in the first six months of this year. These are reflected in new Internal and External Events pages and a Projects page on our website which make our work more visible.
Strategic Conferences
In addition to the East Asia and Beyond AI Conference in Hong Kong organized by our Contributing Fellow Levi Checketts in March, this spring saw strong participation by AI&F experts in four other strategic conferences:
- The Missional AI Summit in Orlando in April, included two AI&F speakers, our Contributing Fellows Thomas Osborn speaking on AI tools for spiritual discipleship and Marcus Schwarting on Natural Language Process in Bible translation. This conference of sophisticated technologists working in Bible translation and missional applications produced a bounty of new expert connections for AI&F and an opportunity to significantly influence the conference focus in 2024.
- The “Dare to Overcome” National Faith ERG Conference in Washington DC in May is targeted at leaders of these faith-oriented pluralist DEI groups across Fortune 500 companies – in many cases technology creators who are a key target audience for our mission. Our third year of participation featured a plenary panel on the main stage organized by our Programs Team on how faith values can lead to participation in corporate ethical discussions. The focus was on “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” in using AI-powered Human Resource algorithmic decision-making tools. 80 people participated in an accompanying drill-down workshop on the topic led by our Contributing Fellow Thomas Osborn and senior SAP executives.
- The Virtuous AI Conference in Berkeley, presented virtually with 10 AI&F experts among the 25 speakers from a variety of faith backgrounds. This three-day conference of theologians, philosophers, technologists, and academics was organized by the Center for Theology and Natural Science, with our assistance in promoting participation. It focused on whether AI’s can be virtuous, and how AI’s are changing concepts of virtue ethics and behavior in the broader culture. The Seoul and Rome versions of the Conference will occur on July 11-14 and 24-27 respectively with further AI&F speakers participating.
- Seattle University’s Conference on “Will Intelligent Machines Prepare the Next Workforce: Three Perspectives” on June 22 was organized by our Advisor Nathan Colaner. It featured a Google Research Fellow, the Pope’s top AI Advisor, and a leader of Deloitte’s AI Institute. Terrific work, Nathan!
In addition to these conferences, AI&F speakers are participating in numerous AI ethics and technology conferences on an individual basis and appearing on podcasts of other AI&F experts and those produced by others. Please alert us of your participation before or after by emailing programs@aiandfaith.org
AI&F Projects
AI&F is not only about speaking into the debate over AI through writing and speaking but charting a path forward for engaging AI technology on both a cross-faith basis and within particular faith traditions.
Our new Projects page highlights AI&F’s shows goals, experts involved, and further details about our work with two ongoing projects and three new ones. Existing projects are the Partnership on AI since May 2022, and with leaders of Faith Employee Resource Groups at major tech companies since 2021. Our three new Projects are:
- Generative AI Project: AI&F Research Fellows and Advisors are exploring necessary boundaries for generative AI and how to wisely apply these technologies in ways important to the practice of faith traditions.
- AI and the Bible: AI&F experts are working with partner organizations like the Museum of the Bible and GLOO to understand and evaluate theological, cultural, and missional implications of AI for engagement with the Hebrew and Christian Bibles.
- Christian AI Call to Action: for Christians and as a potential model for other faiths, four Working Groups of AI&F and outside experts are creating an issues taxonomy, resource base, and relevance cases for broad-spectrum Christian engagement with AI.
If you want to learn more or get directly involved with this work, please contact Admin@aiandfaith.org.
