How Should the Church View AI | Rosalind Picard

Lecture Title - AI, Spirituality, and Human Flourishing What happens when an electrical engineer and computer scientist starts to give AI the skills of emotional intelligence? This talk will highlight cutting-edge capabilities being given to technologies, such as robots that appear to have emotion, and wearable technologies that can measure and in some cases, forecast human mood and stress. Where is this technology taking us? What are the implications for our future? As AI technology rapidly develops, what are the challenges that the church needs to prepare for related to our humanity and the promotion of human flourishing? Rosalind W. Picard (ScD Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is Founder and Director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, Co-Director of the Media Lab’s Advancing Wellbeing Initiative, and Faculty Chair of MIT’s Mind+Hand+Heart Initiative. She has authored or co-authored over 300 scientific articles and chapters spanning computer vision, pattern recognition, machine learning, human-computer interaction, wearable sensors and affective computing, as well as one book, Affective Computing (MIT Press, 2000). Picard is also an active inventor with multiple patents, which have applications in areas such as autism, epilepsy, depression, and PTSD. The Henry Center for Theological Understanding provides theological resources that help bridge the gap between the academy and the church. It houses a cluster of initiatives, each of which is aimed at applying practical Christian wisdom to important kingdom issues—for the good of the church, for the soul of the theological academy, for the sake of the world, and ultimately for the glory of God. The HCTU seeks to ground each of these initiatives in Scripture, and it pursues these goals collaboratively, in order to train a new generation of wise interpreters of the Word—lay persons and scholars alike—for the sake of tomorrow’s church, academy, and world. Visit the HCTU website: https://henrycenter.tiu.edu/  Subscribe to the HCTU Newsletter: https://bit.ly/326pRL5 Watch the HCTU on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HenryCenter Connect with us! https://twitter.com/henry_center https://www.facebook.com/henrycenter/ https://www.instagram.com/thehenrycenter/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/thehenrycenter