Books by Jordan J Wales
What does it mean to consider the world of AI through a Christian lens? Rapid developments in AI ... more What does it mean to consider the world of AI through a Christian lens? Rapid developments in AI continue to reshape society, raising new ethical questions and challenging our understanding of the human person. Encountering Artificial Intelligence draws on Pope Francis’ discussion of a culture of encounter and broader themes in Catholic social thought in order to examine how current AI applications affect human relationships in various social spheres and offers concrete recommendations for better implementation. The document also explores questions regarding personhood, consciousness, and the kinds of relationships humans might have with even the most advanced AI. Through these discussions, the document investigates the theoretical and practical challenges to interpersonal encounter raised by the age of AI.
The lead authors for this volume were Matthew J. Gaudet, Noreen Herzfeld, Paul Scherz, and Jordan Wales; and the contributing authors were Nathan Colaner, Jeremiah Coogan, Mariele Courtois, Brian Cutter, David E. DeCosse, Justin Charles Gable, OP, Brian Patrick Green, James Kintz, Cory Andrew Labrecque, Catherine Moon, Anselm Ramelow, OP, John P. Slattery, Margarita Vega, Luis G. Vera, Andrea Vicini, SJ, and Warren von Eschenbach.
The AI Research Group is a group of North American theologians, philosophers, and ethicists who have come together at the invitation of the Vatican Centre for Digital Culture, under the auspices of the Dicastery for Culture and Education of the Holy See, to discuss the current and future issues that the continued development of artificial intelligence poses for life and society as we know it. This book is the result of the collaborative efforts of these scholars from 2020 to 2023.
Scholarly Articles and Book Chapters by Jordan J Wales
![Research paper thumbnail of Narcissus, the Serpent, and the Saint: Living Humanely in a World of Artificial Intelligence [In Press]](https://a.academia-assets.com/images/blank-paper.jpg)
All Creation Gives Praise: Essays at the Frontier of Science & Religion. Ed. by Jay Martin. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2025
Long before humanoid robots look like us, we will be able to have conversations with our smartpho... more Long before humanoid robots look like us, we will be able to have conversations with our smartphones that will evoke from us all the empathy that adults habitually reserve for fellow human beings. That is , we will own assistants and companions that will feel to us like persons but (unlike pets) will be entirely at our disposal.
I wish to ask: What may we make ourselves become by our use of these apparently personal entities? Will we accustom ourselves to the feeling of being slaveholders? Or, resisting such corrosive acquiescence, will we instead suppress our own empathy for the human-like self-presentation of our AIs?
Inspired by belief in a Trinitarian creator, the early Christian tradition both defines human formation by empathetic self-gift and deeply considers humans’ relationships with artefacts. Consequently, it is well positioned to help us thread the needle—to see machines as machines, not persons, yet without suppressing our empathic sensitivity. With assistance from Augustine and Gregory the Great, in engagement with such contemporary philosophers of mind as Daniel Dennett, I propose how we might live humanely in a world of artificial intelligence by taking up four questions: First, how would an apparently-personal AI work? Second, what might this entity be? Third, what do we risk becoming by treating apparent persons as mere tools? Lastly, how might we live as owners of apparent persons in such a way as to enhance rather than to erode our own humanity?
Perspectives on Spiritual Intelligence, Ed. by Marius Dorobantu and Fraser Watts. Routledge Press, 2024
Influenced by both 17th-century philosophical developments and 21st-century computer science, int... more Influenced by both 17th-century philosophical developments and 21st-century computer science, intelligence today is often defined as “the ability to solve problems.” Drawing on early and medieval Christian thinkers, a theological perspective affords a richer view. For these writers, intellegentia is more than receptive or oriented towards problem-solving. It participates both in the world and in God, by coming to know the world as good not first in how it may serve us but in its kaleidoscopic refraction of the one divine Wisdom, the intellect of God – a refraction that undergirds the latent capacities and potential uses of natural things. Intelligent participation in the world, therefore, is contemplative; the intellegentia passes through the world towards God, its source. In this passage, the diverse echoes of God’s own mind are regathered within the human mind so that the latter becomes ever more an echo of the divine. Theologically understood, this spiritual intelligence entails not only a metaphysics or epistemology of thought, but also a relationship, as the human mind is regathered towards God, known at last not simply as a “highest Good” or first cause and end, but a friend, lover, and, finally, spouse, from whom all things derive their intelligibility as gifts from the triune God who exists by self-gift.
Human Flourishing in a Technological World. Ed. by Jens Zimmermann. Oxford University Press, 2023
Consulting early and medieval Christian thinkers, I theologically analyze the question of how we ... more Consulting early and medieval Christian thinkers, I theologically analyze the question of how we are to construe and live well with the sociable robot. First, the oft-noted Western wariness toward robots may in part be rooted in protecting a certain idea of the “person” as a relational subject capable of self-gift. Historically, this understanding of the person derived from Christian belief in God the Trinity, an eternally relational and self-giving God who has created all other things. According to this trinitarian anthropology, the “glory” of God is the manifestation of his life outside of himself, especially in human relationships of self-possessed empathic self-giving. Second, the material world can be drawn into this glorification of God by the invention of technologies, including robots. For Christianity, the personal transcends the material, and matter cannot simply be recombined to make a person. Nonetheless, the material world is a lesser glory that echoes fragmentarily the primal self-gift by which God exists. Human persons can marshal these material powers to serve the personal by the invention of technology, which extends the possibilities of human self-giving and, therefore, of God’s “glory.” Third, this Christian account of creation and technology shapes medieval Christian writings on humanoid robots. These “automata” uniquely draw together nature’s deep powers, but they lack true personal interiority and so cannot give themselves. Instead, they are instruments by which humans’ own relational personhood can be developed or degraded. At best, a robotic image of personhood can serve as an “icon,” directing us back to the relationality by which humans echo God. At worst, robots serve as “idols” when they become substitutes for human companions, drawing their users into a utilitarian frame that excludes self-gift by simply mirroring back to the user his or her own aims. I will illustrate these outcomes by two medieval legends. In one, robots function iconically as social facilitators; in the other, as ambiguous romantic partners. And fourth, looking to an actual renaissance-era “praying” robot, I will propose that the non-subjective robot might yet “glorify God” within the religious community by representing the prayers of particular humans—thus iconically standing for rather than idolatrously standing in for the relational subject.
Journal of Moral Theology, Mar 2022
Theologians often reflect on the ethical uses and impacts of artificial intelligence, but when it... more Theologians often reflect on the ethical uses and impacts of artificial intelligence, but when it comes to artificial intelligence techniques themselves, some have questioned whether much exists to discuss in the first place. If the significance of computational operations is attributed rather than intrinsic, what are we to say about them? Ancient thinkers—namely Augustine of Hippo (lived 354–430)—break the impasse, enabling us to draw forth the moral and metaphysical significance of current developments like the “deep neural networks” that are responsible for some of the most remarkable achievements of the past few years. First, Augustine’s theology of the natural world’s rationes seminales makes sense of neural networks’ success by explaining the world as a kaleidoscopic refraction of divine Wisdom rather than as a collection of discrete objects standing in crisp relations. Second, his account of interpretive judgment as a moral act bound up with love reveals how our training and use of AI relates to the Christian’s assimilation to Wisdom. The contingent meaning of the neural network reveals AI’s potential either for standing between us and the world or in some sense facilitating a Christian’s regathering of the created echoes of divine Wisdom throughout his or her journey into the Trinity.
Journal of Moral Theology, Mar 2022
and the Pontifical Council for Culture began a conversation on artificial intelligence technology... more and the Pontifical Council for Culture began a conversation on artificial intelligence technology and its relevance for the Catholic Church and the world. The Vatican conference on "The Common Good in the Digital Age" in September of that year served as a focal point for some of these efforts, bringing together representatives from the Church, academia, the technology industry, and other organizations. 2 In his address to the conference, Pope Francis exhorted those present to work to ensure that technology was used for the common good. 3 1 While creating a paper like this might seem as easy as a conversation, it actually involved quite a bit of work, and for that, much gratitude is due to the participants: to them we say thank you.
![Research paper thumbnail of Debate: What is Personhood in the Age of A.I.? [with David J. Gunkel]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/65354952/thumbnails/1.jpg)
AI & Society: Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication, Jan 3, 2021
In a friendly interdisciplinary debate, we interrogate from several vantage points the question o... more In a friendly interdisciplinary debate, we interrogate from several vantage points the question of “personhood” in light of contemporary and near-future forms of social AI. David Gunkel approaches the matter from a philosophical and legal standpoint, while Jordan Wales offers reflections theological and psychological. Attending to metaphysical, moral, social, and legal understandings of personhood, we ask about the position of apparently personal artificial intelligences in our society and individual lives. Re-examining the “person” and questioning prominent construals of that category, we hope to open new views upon urgent and much-discussed questions that, quite soon, may confront us in our daily lives.
For "AI and Law—Ethical, Legal, and Socio-political Implications." Ed. John-Stewart Gordon. Special Issue of AI & Society: Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication.
https://rdcu.be/cc0OT (Full Text)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01129-1
https://philpapers.org/rec/GUNDWI
Culturally Sustainable Social Robotics: Proceedings of Robophilosophy 2020, 2020
According to a tradition that we hold variously today, the relational person lives most personall... more According to a tradition that we hold variously today, the relational person lives most personally in affective and cognitive empathy, whereby we enter subjective communion with another person. Near future social AIs, including social robots, will give us this experience without possessing any subjectivity of their own. They will also be consumer products, designed to be subservient instruments of their users’ satisfaction. This would seem inevitable. Yet we cannot live as personal when caught between instrumentalizing apparent persons (slaveholding) or numbly dismissing the apparent personalities of our instruments (mild sociopathy). This paper analyzes and proposes a step toward ameliorating this dilemma by way of the thought of a 5th century North African philosopher and theologian, Augustine of Hippo, who is among those essential in giving us our understanding of relational persons. Augustine’s semiotics, deeply intertwined with our affective life, suggest that, if we are to own persuasive social robots humanely, we must join our instinctive experience of empathy for them to an empathic acknowledgment of the real unknown relational persons whose emails, text messages, books, and bodily movements will have provided the training data for the behavior of near-future social AIs. So doing, we may see simulation as simulation (albeit persuasive), while expanding our empathy to include those whose refracted behavioral moments are the seedbed of this simulation. If we naïvely stop at the social robot as the ultimate object of our cognitive and affective empathy, we will suborn the sign to ourselves, undermining rather than sustaining a culture that prizes empathy and abhors the instrumentalization of persons.
https://doi.org/10.3233/FAIA200906
https://philpapers.org/rec/WALEAI-5
Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, 2020
Compelling voices charge that the theological notion of “sacrifice” valorizes suffering and foste... more Compelling voices charge that the theological notion of “sacrifice” valorizes suffering and fosters a culture of violence by the claim that Christ’s death on the Cross paid for human sins. Beneath the ‘sacred’ violence of sacrifice, René Girard discerns a concealed scapegoat-murder driven by a distortion of human desire that itself must lead to human self-annihilation. I here ask: can one speak safely of sacrifice; and can human beings somehow cease to practice the sacrifice that must otherwise destroy them? Drawing on Gregory the Great (ca. 540–604), I propose an understanding of sacrifice that both distinguishes Christian sacrifice from sacred violence and accounts for how to overcome the roots of the sacred violence identified by Girard.
I make four claims: First, Girard recognizes two kinds of sacrifice—one, the scapegoat murder, overcomes community rivalries by unanimous imitation of an accuser, shifting blame onto a third party who is collectively murdered; the other sort of sacrifice practices renunciation and forgiveness in imitation of God. These I respectively designate the “Satanic” (Girard’s term) and the “theomimetic” (mine). Second, I analyze the intrinsic instability that keeps the Satanic from sustaining the societal order and unity that it promises. Third, by a constructive reading of Gregory the Great, I posit that satanic sacrifice overlooks and indeed exacerbates the root of human covetousness—a failure to love. Fourth, Gregory’s teaching on the imitation of Christ enables us to expand on Girard’s account of the theo¬mimetic sacrifice of renunciation, to clarify how this latter might not only oppose but also systematically subvert the Satanic by healing the disorder out of which mimetic rivalry and scapegoating first take their rise.
https://doi.org/10.14321/contagion.27.2020.0177
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/contagion.27.2020.0177
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/757320
https://philpapers.org/rec/WALTSA-15
Augustinian Studies, 2018
Gregory the Great depicts himself as a contemplative who, as bishop of Rome, was compelled to bec... more Gregory the Great depicts himself as a contemplative who, as bishop of Rome, was compelled to become an administrator and pastor. His theological response to this existential tension illuminates the vexed questions of his relationships to predecessors and of his legacy. Gregory develops Augustine’s thought in such a way as to satisfy John Cassian’s position that contemplative vision is grounded in the soul’s likeness to the unity of Father and Son. For Augustine, “mercy” lovingly lifts the neighbor toward life in God. Imitating God’s own love for humankind, this mercy likens the Christian to God’s essential goodness and, by this likeness, prepares him or her for the vision of God, which Augustine expects not now but only in the next life. For Augustine, the exercise of mercy can—when useful—involve a shared affection or understanding. Gregory makes this shared affection essential to the neighborly love that he calls “compassion.” In this affective fellowship, Gregory finds a human translation of the passionless unity of Father and Son—so that, for Gregory, compassion becomes the immediate basis for and consequence of seeing God, even in this life. Compassion does not degrade; rather, it retrenches the perfection of contemplation. Reconciling compassionate activity and contemplative vision, this creative renegotiation of Augustine and Cassian both answered Gregory’s own aspirations and gave to the tumultuous post-Imperial West a needed account of worldly affairs as spiritual affairs.
NOTE (8/2018): When in this paper I refer to the "direct" vision of God in this life, I mean not a vision of God's essence, but a direct encounter with God that Gregory calls a "taste" or a "vision" which is not anything mediated by or dependent upon the productive activity of the human mind.
https://doi.org/10.5840/augstudies201861144
https://www.pdcnet.org/augstudies/content/augstudies_2018_0049_0002_0199_0219
https://philpapers.org/rec/WALCC-3
Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 2014
The second of Gregory’s Dialogues, tells the life and miracles of Benedict of Nursia. In this pap... more The second of Gregory’s Dialogues, tells the life and miracles of Benedict of Nursia. In this paper, I will first introduce the Gregorian concepts of spiritual “stability” (stabilitas) and of the spiritual “ruler” (rector), along with the spiritual journey by which “stability” is recovered. Second, focusing on episodes that call attention to Benedict’s physical self-disposition (seated, standing, walking), I will read his life doubly. Under one reading, these episodes proffer moral exempla wherein Benedict’s physical self-possession outwardly manifests a spiritual ruler’s proper response to attacks on him and on his community. Under another reading, the organization and emphases of these same episodes add up to an over-arching narration of Gregory’s theology of spiritual progress, all the way to fullness of love and the vision of God. Third, I will argue that the motif of steadfast love rather than of physical claustration is the deepest foundation of this journey and that the dialogue universalizes the “way of Benedict” to guide even non-monastic readers to the heavenly homeland.
https://philpapers.org/rec/WALTNT-2
Autonomous Robots, Jan 1, 2007
We describe complementary iconic and symbolic representations for parsing the visual world. The i... more We describe complementary iconic and symbolic representations for parsing the visual world. The iconic pixmap representation is operated on by an extensible set of “visual routines” (Ullman, 1984; Forbus et al., 2001). A symbolic representation, in terms of lines, ellipses, blobs,etc., is extracted from the iconic encoding, manipulated al-gebraically, and re-rendered iconically. The two representations are therefore duals, and iconic operations can be freely intermixed with symbolic ones. The dual-coding approach offers robot programmers a versatile collection of primitives from which to construct application-specific vision software. We describe some sample applications implemented on the Sony AIBO.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-007-9024-0
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.62.3155&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Public Articles by Jordan J Wales
Church Life Journal, Oct 11, 2021
The tension between how our images of reality make it navigable and how they may distort it is ma... more The tension between how our images of reality make it navigable and how they may distort it is markedly apparent in the phenomenon of AI bias. A theological reflection suggests three claims: First, technology and idolatry become intertwined when technology is extended by humans toward an unfettered domination of the world. Second, contemporary AI’s great success—the deep neural network—is open to idolatrous misuse at several levels—both because it is an image that can replace reality and because it somewhat echoes the character of the idolatrous mind. Third, early Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo's solution to idolatry—God’s self-revealing incarnation as one of us—suggests that optimistic technological imaginaries of an AI-driven future are essentially inadequate to the needs of human life.
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-image-and-the-idol-a-theological-reflection-on-ai-bias/
Church Life Journal, Mar 18, 2019
Very likely, we shall eventually be able to own humanoid robots that—in professional interactions... more Very likely, we shall eventually be able to own humanoid robots that—in professional interactions, casual conversations, and even shallow romantic relationships—will act persuasively human. In this article, I ask two questions: What is it that we will have made? And more importantly, through these artificial entities, what will we make ourselves become?
https://churchlife.nd.edu/2019/03/18/what-will-a-future-with-androids-among-us-look-like/
The Hillsdale Collegian, Sep 18, 2018
https://hillsdalecollegian.com/2018/09/45193/
The Public Discourse, Dec 20, 2017
By making our common humanity irrelevant to the question of identity, Alt-Right figure Richard Sp... more By making our common humanity irrelevant to the question of identity, Alt-Right figure Richard Spencer sets himself in dramatic opposition to the intellectual roots of the “Western” civilization to which he wishes to lay claim.
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/12/20606/
Sacred Architecture Journal, pp. 26-29, Oct 2010
A reflection on sacred architecture must at some point regard the church edifice precisely as it... more A reflection on sacred architecture must at some point regard the church edifice precisely as it is “sacred”—set apart and consecrated for divine worship. Worship joins human beings to the life of God by knowledge and by love. Yet, in this high affair, what significance should we attribute to the building itself beyond its psychological effect on worshipers? The twelfth century commentary by Hugh of Saint Victor (d. 1141) on the rite for the Dedication of a church answers clearly: second to the Incarnation, the church building is theologically fundamental because it represents and interprets a new sacramental cosmos wherein human beings, as members of Christ, are to return to God. Hugh’s theology combines three themes: his unique division of sacred history into God’s works of foundation and restoration; his liturgical notion of the soul’s journey to the divine likeness and participation in the divine life; and his use of the ancient ascetical theme of the coordination of the created and uncreated temples.
https://www.sacredarchitecture.org/articles/a_house_to_be_dedicated_is_a_soul_to_be_sanctified/
Selected Conference Papers by Jordan J Wales
Annual Meeting of the North American Patristics Society (NAPS), May 2021
Culturally Sustainable Social Robotics: 2020 International Robophilosophy Conference, Aug 2020
Near-future social robots and social AIs will attract us by their apparent subjectivity but—as co... more Near-future social robots and social AIs will attract us by their apparent subjectivity but—as consumer products by design—they will nonetheless invite us to instrumentalize that subjectivity as a tool of our desires. How are we to “use” them without growing comfortable with slaveholding? In combination with Paul Schweizer’s normative mapping account of the computational theory of mind, I turn to the thought of early fifth-century North African philosopher Augustine of Hippo, extending his reflections on human relationships with persons and artefacts to suggest how our empathy toward apparently personal possessions might be exercised in a manner that can upbuild rather than undermine our capacity for authentic interpersonal intimacy.
The Future of Science, Technology, and the Human Person. 41st Convention of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars (FCS), Sep 2018
Artificial intelligence is increasingly and impressively a part of our daily lives. In the future... more Artificial intelligence is increasingly and impressively a part of our daily lives. In the future it is almost certain to yield robotic agents that, in professional interactions, casual conversations, and even shallow romantic relationships, will behave in a manner indistinguishable from human beings. Of this eventuality, we must ask two questions: What is it that we will have made? And more importantly, through these artificial entities, what will we make ourselves become?
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Books by Jordan J Wales
The lead authors for this volume were Matthew J. Gaudet, Noreen Herzfeld, Paul Scherz, and Jordan Wales; and the contributing authors were Nathan Colaner, Jeremiah Coogan, Mariele Courtois, Brian Cutter, David E. DeCosse, Justin Charles Gable, OP, Brian Patrick Green, James Kintz, Cory Andrew Labrecque, Catherine Moon, Anselm Ramelow, OP, John P. Slattery, Margarita Vega, Luis G. Vera, Andrea Vicini, SJ, and Warren von Eschenbach.
The AI Research Group is a group of North American theologians, philosophers, and ethicists who have come together at the invitation of the Vatican Centre for Digital Culture, under the auspices of the Dicastery for Culture and Education of the Holy See, to discuss the current and future issues that the continued development of artificial intelligence poses for life and society as we know it. This book is the result of the collaborative efforts of these scholars from 2020 to 2023.
Scholarly Articles and Book Chapters by Jordan J Wales
I wish to ask: What may we make ourselves become by our use of these apparently personal entities? Will we accustom ourselves to the feeling of being slaveholders? Or, resisting such corrosive acquiescence, will we instead suppress our own empathy for the human-like self-presentation of our AIs?
Inspired by belief in a Trinitarian creator, the early Christian tradition both defines human formation by empathetic self-gift and deeply considers humans’ relationships with artefacts. Consequently, it is well positioned to help us thread the needle—to see machines as machines, not persons, yet without suppressing our empathic sensitivity. With assistance from Augustine and Gregory the Great, in engagement with such contemporary philosophers of mind as Daniel Dennett, I propose how we might live humanely in a world of artificial intelligence by taking up four questions: First, how would an apparently-personal AI work? Second, what might this entity be? Third, what do we risk becoming by treating apparent persons as mere tools? Lastly, how might we live as owners of apparent persons in such a way as to enhance rather than to erode our own humanity?
For "AI and Law—Ethical, Legal, and Socio-political Implications." Ed. John-Stewart Gordon. Special Issue of AI & Society: Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication.
https://rdcu.be/cc0OT (Full Text)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01129-1
https://philpapers.org/rec/GUNDWI
https://doi.org/10.3233/FAIA200906
https://philpapers.org/rec/WALEAI-5
I make four claims: First, Girard recognizes two kinds of sacrifice—one, the scapegoat murder, overcomes community rivalries by unanimous imitation of an accuser, shifting blame onto a third party who is collectively murdered; the other sort of sacrifice practices renunciation and forgiveness in imitation of God. These I respectively designate the “Satanic” (Girard’s term) and the “theomimetic” (mine). Second, I analyze the intrinsic instability that keeps the Satanic from sustaining the societal order and unity that it promises. Third, by a constructive reading of Gregory the Great, I posit that satanic sacrifice overlooks and indeed exacerbates the root of human covetousness—a failure to love. Fourth, Gregory’s teaching on the imitation of Christ enables us to expand on Girard’s account of the theo¬mimetic sacrifice of renunciation, to clarify how this latter might not only oppose but also systematically subvert the Satanic by healing the disorder out of which mimetic rivalry and scapegoating first take their rise.
https://doi.org/10.14321/contagion.27.2020.0177
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/contagion.27.2020.0177
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/757320
https://philpapers.org/rec/WALTSA-15
NOTE (8/2018): When in this paper I refer to the "direct" vision of God in this life, I mean not a vision of God's essence, but a direct encounter with God that Gregory calls a "taste" or a "vision" which is not anything mediated by or dependent upon the productive activity of the human mind.
https://doi.org/10.5840/augstudies201861144
https://www.pdcnet.org/augstudies/content/augstudies_2018_0049_0002_0199_0219
https://philpapers.org/rec/WALCC-3
https://philpapers.org/rec/WALTNT-2
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-007-9024-0
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.62.3155&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Public Articles by Jordan J Wales
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-image-and-the-idol-a-theological-reflection-on-ai-bias/
https://churchlife.nd.edu/2019/03/18/what-will-a-future-with-androids-among-us-look-like/
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/12/20606/
https://www.sacredarchitecture.org/articles/a_house_to_be_dedicated_is_a_soul_to_be_sanctified/
Selected Conference Papers by Jordan J Wales
The lead authors for this volume were Matthew J. Gaudet, Noreen Herzfeld, Paul Scherz, and Jordan Wales; and the contributing authors were Nathan Colaner, Jeremiah Coogan, Mariele Courtois, Brian Cutter, David E. DeCosse, Justin Charles Gable, OP, Brian Patrick Green, James Kintz, Cory Andrew Labrecque, Catherine Moon, Anselm Ramelow, OP, John P. Slattery, Margarita Vega, Luis G. Vera, Andrea Vicini, SJ, and Warren von Eschenbach.
The AI Research Group is a group of North American theologians, philosophers, and ethicists who have come together at the invitation of the Vatican Centre for Digital Culture, under the auspices of the Dicastery for Culture and Education of the Holy See, to discuss the current and future issues that the continued development of artificial intelligence poses for life and society as we know it. This book is the result of the collaborative efforts of these scholars from 2020 to 2023.
I wish to ask: What may we make ourselves become by our use of these apparently personal entities? Will we accustom ourselves to the feeling of being slaveholders? Or, resisting such corrosive acquiescence, will we instead suppress our own empathy for the human-like self-presentation of our AIs?
Inspired by belief in a Trinitarian creator, the early Christian tradition both defines human formation by empathetic self-gift and deeply considers humans’ relationships with artefacts. Consequently, it is well positioned to help us thread the needle—to see machines as machines, not persons, yet without suppressing our empathic sensitivity. With assistance from Augustine and Gregory the Great, in engagement with such contemporary philosophers of mind as Daniel Dennett, I propose how we might live humanely in a world of artificial intelligence by taking up four questions: First, how would an apparently-personal AI work? Second, what might this entity be? Third, what do we risk becoming by treating apparent persons as mere tools? Lastly, how might we live as owners of apparent persons in such a way as to enhance rather than to erode our own humanity?
For "AI and Law—Ethical, Legal, and Socio-political Implications." Ed. John-Stewart Gordon. Special Issue of AI & Society: Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication.
https://rdcu.be/cc0OT (Full Text)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01129-1
https://philpapers.org/rec/GUNDWI
https://doi.org/10.3233/FAIA200906
https://philpapers.org/rec/WALEAI-5
I make four claims: First, Girard recognizes two kinds of sacrifice—one, the scapegoat murder, overcomes community rivalries by unanimous imitation of an accuser, shifting blame onto a third party who is collectively murdered; the other sort of sacrifice practices renunciation and forgiveness in imitation of God. These I respectively designate the “Satanic” (Girard’s term) and the “theomimetic” (mine). Second, I analyze the intrinsic instability that keeps the Satanic from sustaining the societal order and unity that it promises. Third, by a constructive reading of Gregory the Great, I posit that satanic sacrifice overlooks and indeed exacerbates the root of human covetousness—a failure to love. Fourth, Gregory’s teaching on the imitation of Christ enables us to expand on Girard’s account of the theo¬mimetic sacrifice of renunciation, to clarify how this latter might not only oppose but also systematically subvert the Satanic by healing the disorder out of which mimetic rivalry and scapegoating first take their rise.
https://doi.org/10.14321/contagion.27.2020.0177
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/contagion.27.2020.0177
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/757320
https://philpapers.org/rec/WALTSA-15
NOTE (8/2018): When in this paper I refer to the "direct" vision of God in this life, I mean not a vision of God's essence, but a direct encounter with God that Gregory calls a "taste" or a "vision" which is not anything mediated by or dependent upon the productive activity of the human mind.
https://doi.org/10.5840/augstudies201861144
https://www.pdcnet.org/augstudies/content/augstudies_2018_0049_0002_0199_0219
https://philpapers.org/rec/WALCC-3
https://philpapers.org/rec/WALTNT-2
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-007-9024-0
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.62.3155&rep=rep1&type=pdf
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-image-and-the-idol-a-theological-reflection-on-ai-bias/
https://churchlife.nd.edu/2019/03/18/what-will-a-future-with-androids-among-us-look-like/
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/12/20606/
https://www.sacredarchitecture.org/articles/a_house_to_be_dedicated_is_a_soul_to_be_sanctified/
Touretzky , David S.; Tira-Thompson, Ethan J.; Wales, Jordan. “Cognitive Primitives for Mobile Robots.” The Intersection of Cognitive Science and Robotics: From Interfaces to Intelligence. Session in the 2004 AAAI Fall Symposium. Technical Report FS-04-05[-20] (2004): 110–111.
https://www.aaai.org/Papers/Symposia/Fall/2004/FS-04-05/FS04-05-020.pdf
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRjvNqi8DdQ
Artificial Intelligence is achieving evermore impressive milestones, but it is often confusing to orientate between the media hype and the reality of what technology can actually do. Recently, a Google engineer sparked controversy by claiming that the chatbot he was working with (LaMDA) had become sentient. He arrived at this conclusion because of the program’s supposed relational abilities and apparent interest in God, redemption, and existential concerns.
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