I Think, Therefore I Am: AI, Ethics, & Humanity With Dr. Michael Hemenway  

I Think, Therefore I Am? AI, Ethics, & Humanity With Dr. Michael Hemenway

What does theology have to do with AI? A lot: Theological principles can guide values and ethics, and quite frankly, we need to be sure we have some around coexisting with AI. The ethical use of technology has always been a subject for debate (including around personal privacy and the digital age). But AI brings a whole new layer of ethical consideration–and existential crisis–for human beings. Technologist and theological scholar Dr. Michael Hemenway joins us to discuss the ethical implications of AI and how we can all guide responsible innovation and create space for both AI and humanity.  

About Our Guest

Dr. Michael Hemenway serves as the Director of Design and Data Science at the Association of Theological Schools. His expertise spans data integration, natural language processing, organizational and instructional design, and ethical AI development. He was co-founder of the Experimental Humanities Lab and the Artificial Intelligence Institute at the Iliff School of Theology. 

Episode Highlights:

• [14:52] - What Do AI Ethics and Ancient Texts Have in Common?
• [19:35] - Ethics vs. Values in AI
• [25:54] - Are We Outsourcing Our Humanity to AI?
• [40:10] - What History Teaches Us About Regulating AI
• [50:18] - Should We Fear AI or Learn to Work With It?
• [54:39] - What Every Privacy Professional Must Know About AI Tools
• [01:03:11] - A Better Way to Understand Online Privacy Risks

Quotes:

• "TRUST, for us, means transparency, responsibility, user-centeredness, sustainability, and team."
• "In our practice, ethics leans more toward putting values into practice, especially in decision-making."
• "I don't think regulation comes first. I think regulation supports the values of a society that then drives the ethical framework guiding decision-making."
• "As we see generative AI have creative capacities, we say, What is it then that makes humans and not machines or something else? AI has made this question more pertinent than it has been in the past, and that's one of the reasons I think this technological movement is different from earlier technological movements. They all pose a threat in some way to how we relate to the world. But this one is particularly tense because it's challenging that thing we thought made us exceptional."
• “I don't see AI becoming something so different from what we've experienced before that we need to have a radically different approach to how we engage this as a society. There are new things emerging. We need to pay attention to that newness. We need to build capacities as broadly as we can for folks to be able to use and engage these technologies and to have a voice in how they're gonna be developed in the future.”

Episode Resources:

• Dr. Michael Hemenway on LinkedIn
• The Association of Theological Schools Website
• Case Western Reserve University Website
• Osano Website