Two years on from the launch of ChatGPT, the initial hype around generative artificial intelligence is beginning to settle. We now turn our attention to the ongoing implications of AI for the way we live, learn, work and relate to one another. What challenges and opportunities does AI present for the fundamental human quest for wisdom?

The AI and the Quest for Wisdom Conference will explore these questions, with presentations organised around the following three themes:

1. AI and society
   A general stream for reflecting on the social, cultural and political implications of a range of AI applications and potential future developments.

2. Philosophical and theological engagements with AI
   A stream for exploring the significance or implications of AI from specific philosophical or theological perspectives.

3. Re-imagining teaching in a world with AI
   A stream for exploring the promises and pitfalls of AI in the context of higher education, with a focus on pedagogical theory and practice.

Prof Beth Singler
“AI Gods and Monsters: Religious Improvisations and Emergent Forms”

Drawing on recent ethnographic and transdisciplinary research, Professor Singler’s talk will describe and begin to provide a framework and typologies for thinking about emerging spiritualities and religious improvisations in the entanglements of AI and religion. Connecting new AI gods to individuals, movements, and ideologies, this presentation will consider the wider ontological, eschatological, and teleological impulses in AI discourse and how AI theisms, religious improvisations, and new religious movements are increasingly visible and influencing the overall conversation about what AI and where it is going.

Beth Singler is the Assistant Professor in Digital Religion(s), Co-Director of the URPP Digital Religion(s), Co-Lead of the Media Existential Encounters and Evolving Technology Lab, and part of the directorate of the Digital Society Initiative, all at the University of Zurich. Her anthropological research considers the social, ethical, and religious implications in developments in AI and robotics. Recent publications include the Cambridge Companion to Religion and AI and Religion and AI: An Introduction.

Dr Luke Munn
“From Broken to Better: Critiquing, Grasping, and Enriching Artificial Intelligence”

AI technologies are powerful but problematic, with the capacity to undermine trust, exacerbate inequality, and damage lives and livelihoods. While the dominant response to this risk has been ethical principles, I argue such principles are toothless and meaningless, failing to mitigate the social, cultural, and environmental fallout of AI. Better AI begins with understanding how these technologies work. To this end, I introduce “Unmaking AI,” a framework for laypeople to grasp the logics and limitations of models. I then offer a provocation showing how AI systems might be shaped in more contextual, equitable, and sustainable ways using an Indigenous (Māori) schema. Together, these interventions highlight the limits of “capture it all” data-driven knowledge and ask what wisdom looks like in the age of AI. 

Luke Munn is a media studies scholar based at UQ in Mianjin/Brisbane. His wide-ranging research investigating the social, political, and environmental impacts of digital technologies has been featured in highly regarded journals such as AI and Society, Cultural Politics, and Big Data & Society as well as popular forums like The Guardian and Scientific American. He has written six books: Unmaking the Algorithm (2018), Logic of Feeling (2020), Automation is a Myth (2022), Countering the Cloud (2022), Red Pilled (2023), and Technical Territories (2023). His work combines diverse digital methods with critical analysis that draws on media, race, and cultural studies.