You would have to be hiding under a rock not to be aware of how prevalent the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming in our world. Yet, many people – most of us – don’t really understand how it works, its limitations, its possibilities, or its plethora of ethical considerations. The Sewell Lecture with Dr. Sylvester Johnson on April 25th at 1:00pm in our sanctuary will help all of us – novices and those with greater understanding – be able to examine how AI is, will be, and could be shaping our world for the better and for the worse.
Please, reserve your space by getting your tickets for the event here, and share an invitation to your friends and family to join us at this free event.
I had the pleasure and privilege of serving alongside Sylvester Johnson on the Board of Trustees of the Starr King School for the Ministry as our board terms overlapped. He is one of those people who has a way of thinking outside of the box as he brings together insights from multiple domains of scholarship, especially in the realms of race, religion, ethics, and technology. Dr. Johnson is a professor of Black Studies at Northwestern University; he leads the “Human Futures, Future Humans” Project, and he is the CEO and cofounder of the Corporation for Public Interest Technology. I am delighted that you will have the opportunity to hear his lecture and to also sign up for the workshop to follow, if you would like to delve deeper with others afterwards.
AI is showing up in more and more places in our lives. You may or may not realize it, but every time you search online you interact with AI-generated responses to your search queries. That is, unless you have made an effort to turn off that feature.
The question for all of us is to better understand when AI is being used in ways that lead to greater oppression and when it is a tool for resistance and liberation. Today, children have questions about AI woven into their curriculum. While my eighth grader is not allowed to use AI for assignments in general, he has had an assignment where he was specifically asked to discern the ethical differences between responses given by some of the major large-tech AI programs.
The upcoming Sewell lecture and optional workshop on Saturday, April 25, is a chance for all of us – youth and adults of all ages – to become better informed about how we might center our values in how we choose to engage or choose to disengage from the use of artificial intelligence. I hope that you will make it and bring others with you to this important event, which we are offering for free at this pivotal moment in history.
With curiosity and hope about all we will learn together,
Rev. Alison