It is difficult to open any news source these days without encountering an article on artificial intelligence (AI). The technology is developing at unchecked speed, with unknown consequences for human life and work and for the natural environment. In May of this year, Pope Leo made an important contribution to the discussion of AI with his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, a major document on the preservation of human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence.
The 14th annual William K. Collinge Lecture, co-sponsored by the Interfaith Center for Peace and Justice and St. Francis Xavier Church, will focus on this document. The speaker will be Dr. Taylor Nutter, Assistant Professor of Theology at Mount St. Mary’s University. The lecture will take place on Thursday, September 3, at 7 p.m., at St. Francis Xavier School, 455 Table Rock Rd., Gettysburg.
Dr. Nutter holds a PhD in theology from the University of Notre Dame and is a member of the Vatican’s research group on AI. He is part of a committee of that group that is currently working on a book, “Educating in the Age of AI.”
Dr. Nutter’s lecture, titled “AI and the Structural Analysis of Injustice: What the Dignity of the Human Being Requires of Us,” will locate Magnifica Humanitas within the Catholic social teaching tradition’s structural analysis of social injustices. Second, it will argue that AI ought not to be approached as something completely new but rather as also the result of a long tradition of thought.
This will be the second successive Collinge Lecture on AI. It will neither presuppose nor duplicate Dr. Katherine Schmidt’s lecture of last year but rather complement it with a focus on the new papal document.
The lecture honors the late William K. Collinge, who was a benefactor to both St. Francis Xavier and the Interfaith Center. Admission is free.