AI sentience 2: I-Thou relationships, talking to stuffed animals, thanking Alexa, and Turing red flag laws
Playback speed
Building on last week’s discussion of AI chatbots, we consider the theology and sociology of why interacting with other human beings is so central to our personhood. But would it matter if we did enter into a counselling or caring relationship with a robot or AI software, if we felt it helped our loneliness or anxiety? How can we be raising young people, who cannot remember a world before smart speakers and digital assistants, to engage well and honestly with the AI all around them? And might there be a role for regulation to hem in the ambitions of the overmighty tech giants in this space?
You can read John’s briefing paper on AI and simulated relationships here - https://johnwyatt.com/2020/01/10/article-artificial-intelligence-and-simulated-relationships/
Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
Released on 26 Oct 2022
Coming up next
Protestant Social Teaching 1: Overlap with Catholicism, chronological snobbery, rejecting one-size-fits-all ethics, and ‘worldly’ versus ‘spiritual’ matters
Over 150 years the Catholic Church has built up a body of ethical doctrine commonly known as Catholic Social Teaching, which applies Catholic theology to wider social concerns, covering everything from labour relations to contraception. In this episo...
Protestant Social Teaching 2: The ars moriendi, open casket funerals in Derry Girls, the end of Christendom and ethical quietism
Resuming our conversation with Rhys Laverty from the Davenant Institute, we look at John’s contribution to the Protestant Social Teaching book – a chapter exploring post-Reformation tradition around death and dying. What might medieval and early mode...
Dependence 1: Isolated elderly people, altruistic suicide, a second childhood, and a crucified hero
We’ve discussed in previous episodes the looming ‘demographic timebomb’ – a growing mass of elderly and increasingly chronically ill people in many developed nations, expected to place huge strain on public resources. The policy debates around this i...