We are now able to have conversations with AI apps on our smartphones that evoke from us all the empathy that adults habitually reserve for fellow human beings. For a fee, we can own the behavior of assistants and companions that feel to us like persons but (unlike pets) are entirely at our disposal. Their persuasive friendship and understanding is the service for which we pay. How can we live personally in a world of artificial intelligence?

To answer this question, SBI is hosting Jordan Joseph Wales for a lecture on AI and theology. With assistance from Christian antiquity, he will take up four questions. First, how does an apparently personal AI work? Second, what might this entity be? Third, what might we become, owning the behavior of apparent persons? Lastly, in a society saturated by such AI tools, how might we live in such a way as to enhance rather than to erode our own humanity?

Jordan Joseph Wales is an Associate Professor of Theology & the John and Helen Kuczmarski Chair in Theology at Hillsdale College.