Conference Schedule

Thursday, April 10:

  • 9:30 Conference registration desk opens
  • 10:00 Coffee and Tea available 
  • 11:00 Graduate Student Panel
    • Jordan Baker, M.Div. candidate, Yale Divinity School
      • “Algorithmic Trust and Agential Possession”
    • Sean Baz-Garza, Ph.D. candidate, Baylor University
      • “Theology, AI, and Internal/External Goods”
    • Johanna Merz, Ph.D. candidate, LMU Munich
      • “AI, Fragility, and Creative Freedom”
  • 12:30 Lunch 
  • 13:30 Welcome
  • 13:45 Keynote I:
    • William Schweiker, Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics, University of Chicago
      • “Conscience and the Ends of Humanity: Christian Humanism and Artificial Intelligence”
  • 15:15 Coffee Break
  • 16:00 Faculty Panel I: Reconsidering Humanity in Light of AI
    • Marius Dorobantu, Assistant Professor of Theology and Artificial Intelligence, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
      • “Will God speak to intelligent robots? Why strong AI’s how is more important than its what”
    • Kathryn Reklis, Associate Professor of Modern Protestant Theology, Fordham University
      • “They will know you by your love for robots: technology, relationality, and the limits of humanity”
  • 17:30 Reception with hearty hors d’oeuvres
  • 18:30 Keynote II:
    • Manuel Vargas, Professor of Philosophy, University of California San Diego
      • “AI & Morally Austere Ecologies”

Friday, April 11:

  • 8:00 Breakfast 
  • 9:00 Faculty Panel II: The Spiritual Status of (Hypothetical) AIs
    • Brian Cutter, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame
      • “AI Consciousness, Personhood, and Ensoulment”
    • David Zvi Kalman, Shalom Hartman Institute of North America
      • “Who’s Afraid of AI Personhood?
  • 10:30 Coffee 
  • 11:00 Faculty Panel III: From Capitalism to Decoloniality—Nightmares and Visions
    • Linn Tonstad, Professor of Theology, Yale University
      • TBD
    • Valentina Tirloni, Professor of Information Science, University of Nice
      • “Democracy, Politics, and AI”
    • M. Wolff, Associate Professor of Religion, Augustana College
      • “Cruising Decolonial Utopias: AI Benefits and Threats, Real versus Imagined”
  • 12:45 Lunch 
  • 13:45 Keynote III:
    • Paul Scherz, Our Lady of Guadalupe Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame
      • “Automation and Augmentation in Theological Perspective”
  • 15:15 Coffee 
  • 16:00 Panel IV: AI and Eschatological Hope
    • Ted Peters, Professor Emeritus, Graduate Theological Union
      • “AI, IA, and the End of Humanity?”
    • Luciano Floridi, Founding Director of the Digital Ethics Center, Yale University
      • “A Digital Deity: AI as the New Ultimate Other and the Emergence of Techno-Eschatology”
  • 17:30 Conference concludes