2024-07-10 Newman center lecture

Introduction

Assistant professor of learning sciences.
Formerly high school English teacher.
Launching CS teacher preparation program.
Not part of the church today, but I feel the shape of my thought is Catholic. I can give two examples, which will be important later in this talk:
- Importance of media
- Social practice.
I was asked to speak about AI. What I’d specifically like to talk about is how AI might interact with a life of faith. Particularly interesting to be here today because several of Buffalo’s Catholic schools have CS programs; I’d be interested to think about how CS can be part of a holistic spiritual education.
When I was an English teacher, one of my favorite books to read and discuss with my students was Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, about Reuven and Danny, two boys who belong to Orthodox and Hasidic Judiasm respectively, growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940’s. As Reuven and Danny pass through adolescence, they have to wrestle with the relationship between faith and modernity. I frequently found myself having deep discussions with my students:
- How can we live a life of faith without rejecting science?
- If we believe God is all-knowing and all-powerful and has a plan for us, it our place to try to fix the world’s problems?

Crisis of sense
- We have augmented senses today. You need to think of your phone and the Internet as part of you, a sensory apparatus through which you make sense of the world.
- But what is real? Deepfakes.
Crisis of reason
- Astro-turf. Echo chambers.
Crisis of identity
- What is consciousness? Are we like AI? Turing test.
- Replika. Relationship with AI?

Barth. Insist on the autonomy of God. Distrust your reason, your senses. Rely on faith.
Sherry Turkle. Use