​

Faith and AI Social

Neurips 2023

A space for people of all faiths

to come together and discuss the increasingly important issues and opportunities in Faith + AI

​

Agenda

​

Faith and AI Social

Neurips 2023

​

Talks

Speakers

​

Hannah Eagleson

​

​

Dr. Eagleson is Director of Partnerships and Innovation for American Scientific Affiliation, and is a Cornell chaplain to scholars. She is developing a report for Christian organizations on engaging AI through scholarship-informed programming. The report is shaped by two Visiting Scholar roles (2022/2023), one at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) and one at New College Berkeley, affiliated with the Graduate Theological Union. Dr. Eagleson is launching innovative AI and faith programming through ASA, which helps to gather diverse Christian communities around emerging questions. She recently spoke at the Duquesne Grefenstette Center 2023 Tech Ethics Symposium on generative AI. She holds a PhD, University of Delaware, and an MA, St. John’s College.

Faith & AI: Models of Change

NeurIPS Social

​

Dr. Hannah Eagleson: 2022/23 Visiting Scholar Roles

Focused on AI & Religious Institutions

Dr. Hannah Eagleson: Intro

Director of Partnerships & Innovation, ASA; hannah@asa3.org

PhD Early Modern Literature, University of Delaware; MA St. John’s College

Designing ASA Programs for Christianity & AI

Intro & Quick Overview

​

• 1 Historical Case Study: Ethical Change in a Field Informed by Insights from Faith
• Contemporary Case Studies: Models of Change from Christians in AI
• 3 Questions to Think About
• Examples from Christian tradition, hopefully adaptable
• Looking forward to learning from everyone

Medical Ethics: Status Quo 1945-65

Medical Ethics: Status Quo 2023

How Did this Change?

Historical Case Study:�Medicine & Informed Consent

• Framework informed by Christian ethics
• Designed to benefit all patients
• Work of many people of many views over time
• Required political & regulatory structures

​

Rothman, David J. Strangers at the Bedside. London & New York: Routledge, 2017 (originally published 1991 by Transaction Publishers).

Contextual Similarities for Medical Field in 20^th Century & People of Faith in AI Now

• Rapid technical developments in field
• Public admiration & fear around new tech
• Highly skilled professionals
• Desire to do good in the world through field

Rothman, David J. Strangers at the Bedside. London & New York: Routledge, 2017 (originally published 1991 by Transaction Publishers).

What Can We Learn for Faith & AI from the Story of Informed Consent in Medicine?

Faith for the Common Good

​

• Paul Ramsey, Princeton philosopher who influenced bioethics
• Applied Christian ethics to contemporary issues
• Helped develop informed consent frameworks

​

Rothman, pp. 92-97, 105.

​

Image: Princeton University Chapel 2003, Wikimedia Commons, Author cocoloco, CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Princeton_University_Chapel_2003.jpg

Ethical Change in a Field & External Support

​

Rothman charts throughout book:

​

• Change required a large number of people working over time
• Informed consent frameworks didn’t achieve momentum through internal change in medicine alone
• Change required external regulatory structures from the public & government

Listening to the Social Sciences

• Arguably not enough attention to social sciences in movements that developed informed consent

​

• Improvement in individual patient rights in hospital, but maybe not in conditions that led to hospitalizations

​

• Opportunity to do better in AI?

​

• Rothman 221, 270

Contemporary Case Studies

Models of Change from Christian Individuals & Institutions in AI

Mutale Nkonde�AI for the People

• CEO of AI for the People
• Justice Focused Thought Leader
• Leads Secular Nonprofit
• Aspen Institute Society of Fellows
• Visiting Policy Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute

​

Model: Secular nonprofit focused on needed changes for justice in field

​

Chris Lim, Theotech CEO & Co-Founder�

• Leads Company Built Around Faith & Tech
• Product Example: spf.io, translation for multilingual churches & settings
• Leads Theotech podcast, public engagement on faith & tech

​

Model: Company Focused on Needs within a Faith

Dr. George Montañez�

• AMISTAD Lab at Harvey Mudd College
• Producing scientific knowledge & training next generation
• Diverse & Inclusive Lab
• Technical Insights into Bias to Help Solve AI justice Issues

​

Model: Producing technical research & training the next generation in secular university

�������3 Questions for People of Faith in AI: Based on insights from your religious tradition or practice: ��1. Where do you see potential for positive change in AI as a field? �2. What kind of accountability external to the field could help? �3. How can history & social science inform change? ��

Lisa S. Lehmann

​

Lisa is a physician and AI ethicist with a PhD in moral philosophy. She is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

​

From 2020-2023 Lisa was Director of Bioethics and Trust at Google.

​

She has a background in the study of Talmudic texts and the Jewish tradition.

​

​

​

​

Jewish Perspectives on AI

Lisa S. Lehmann, MD, PhD

LzsLehmann@gmail.com

​

​

Overview

• Context and type of AI matters
• Jewish concepts to inform decisions about AI
• Implications of Jewish values for AI engineers
• Why turn to religion for guidance on our use of AI

Implications of Varied Uses of AI

• Generative AI
• Clinical decision support in healthcare
• Criminal Justice
• Digital Immortality
• Robots
• Potential for emotions and consciousness?
• Is it morally permissible to create synthetics beings with consciousness?

​

Jewish Concepts to Inform the Use of AI

• Covenant (brit)
• Humans as created in image of God (b’tzelem Elokim)
• Tikkun olam–repairing and improving the world
• Privacy

The Biblical Concept of Covenant

1. Universal Noachide covenant with humanity as a whole (Genesis 9:1-7)
2. Particular-national Israelite covenant (Exodus 20:1-23)
1. Responsibility
1. God and humans are both conceived of as moral agents who are accountable
2. There are boundaries and human dignity should constrain some actions/commodification
2. Reciprocity
• God is a caring law giver, open to human appeals
• Covenant is predicated on relationships, trust, justice, free choice
3. Reasonability
• Divine instruction is intelligible

Potential Implications of a Covenantal Lens

for AI Developers

​

• Covenant as an ethical model in which the stronger partner has an inherent moral commitment to care for the other party
• This relational model generates a duty to create a reciprocal and fair relationship
• A moral obligation to restrain work-rounds by tech companies where they may argue no harm ensues or disclosure is cryptic
• Ex. location tracking
• Voluntary association and commitment
• Mutual consent to data usage
• Easy exist from relationship
• Mutuality mandates giving reasons for what is collected and used
• Manipulation by digital platforms undermines the covenantal relationship
• A commitment to explainability and accountability

Humans Created in the Image of God

(b’zelem Elokim)

“And God said: Let us make man in our image (b’zelem Elokim)..” Genesis 1:26

• Humanity created in the image of God
• Inherent human dignity of every human being
• Results in the uniqueness of human beings
• Results in the challenge for humans to imitate God through creative acts (imitatio Dei, R. Joseph Soloveitchik)

​

Implications of Tikkun Olam for AI

• An ethical obligation to repair and improve a fractured world
• Judaism generally embraces technology to make the world better
• Improve health outcomes through the use of AI
• Focus on safety of AI, anticipating and mitigating risks
• Focus on justice, equity, and mitigating bias in algorithms
• Empowering people through the use of generative AI and access to information

Implications of Jewish Views of Privacy and AI

• Protection of privacy is a human good
• It is a prerequisite for vibrant good society
• It is an obligation of all members of society
• Surveillance is at odds with this understanding of privacy
• Surveillance may constrain free choice by modifying human behavior

​

Jewish Concerns About AI

• Risk to human flourishing and creativity
• De-skilling and complacency
• Knowledge vs. wisdom
• Impact on human relationships and experiences
• Our relationships with others are a portal to a relationship with God
• I-It–instrumental relationship, trying to achieve a goal vs. I-Thou the goal is to connect uniquely with the other person (Martin Buber, I and Thou)
• Can we have an I-Thou relationship with a bot? Can bots have I-Thou relationships with each other?

​

​

Challenging Open Questions for Judaism

1. Are there limits to our creativity?
1. Is it permissible to create robots with AGI who are conscious like human beings?
2. Is it permissible to advance technology that infringes on cognitive or mental privacy?
• E.g., technology that is invasive and detects our thoughts, mood, etc.
3. What, if anything, would make AI efforts to create digital immortality religiously acceptable?

​

Why Turn to Religion for Guidance?

• Religious wisdom as a resource for universal ethics
• Francis Fukuyama argues that religion expands human perspectives beyond the confines of local communities and toward a sense of global humanity
• Religion has a global reach that allows individuals to identify with a shared humanity.
• Religion can foster a sense of responsibility toward the wellbeing of all people
• “The prophets of ancient Israel were the first to think globally, to conceive of a God transcending place and national boundaries and of humanity as a signal moral community linked by a covenant of mutual responsibility (the covenant with Noah after the flood).” (see Jonathan Sacks, Global Covenant: A Jewish Perspective on Globalization.)

​

​

Summary

• There is no one Jewish perspective on the use of AI
• The context and purpose for which AI is used is essential to the Jewish assessment of AI
• Jewish concepts and the model of a covenantal relationship can guide ethical decision making about AI

​

​

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad

​

​

Current: Research Scientist at University of Washington’s Harborview Medical Center and an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Washington Bothell.

​

Background: PhD in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. Spent a year in a Master program in Christian Theology at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.

​

Research: Algorithmic nudging at scale, modeling critical conditions like Sepsis as Complex Systems using machine learning, Responsible AI, and personality emulation.

​

Academic Appointments: University of Washington, Center for Cognitive Science at University of Minnesota, Minnesota Population Center, and the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur.

Islamic Perspectives on AI

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad

University of Washington�

maahmad@uw.edu

Why AI & Religion?

• Majority of the world’s population has a religious affiliation
• Centuries of thinking about moral issues
• Encode different cultural and historical assumptions
• Wrestled with questions of non-human life and the place of humankind in the grand scheme of things

​

Non-Human Intelligences & Islamic Thought

• Non-Human Intelligences in Islamic Tradition
• Angels, Jins, Hinns
• Legal theory on cross-species relationships
• Humans as having dominion over Earth (Khalifa)
• Possibility of intelligence superior to humans

Kitāb al-Bulhān (Arabic: كتاب البلهان)�Book of Wonders

And We certainly honored the children of Adam and carried them on the land and sea and provided for them of the good things and preferred them over much of what We have created, with [definitive] preference

​

Quran (17:70)

Mechanical Intelligence & Islamic Thought

• Takvin (life from non-life)
• 10^th Century Tunisia: Use of automata to teach key moments in the life of Prophet Muhammad
• Aljaziri’s Book of Ingenious Devices (12^th Century)
• Takvin: Medieval Muslim alchemists explored the idea of creating life from inorganic matter
• Allah’s Automata (2015 Exhibition Berlin)

[Aljaziri’s Ablution Automata]

AI & Islam: Interpreting Religion

AI generated Sermons

• People are using LLMs to generate sermons including Imams
• Veracity of the quoted text comes into question because of Hallucinations

Generative Fatwas

• A fatwa is a (non-binding) religious edict/opinion given by an informed Muslim scholar
• AI models are already being used to give fatwas on generic topics. Earliest efforts go as far back as 2007
• Gen AI opens the possibility of cherry-picked fatwas on demand

​

​

AI & Islam: Interpreting Religion

LLMs and Authority

• LLMs are already being used by Muslims globally to access religious knowledge
• The question of veracity comes into play
• Different sects and schools of thought will likely create their own (certified) LLMs

​

AI & Islam: Islamic Perspectives on Privacy

• 'Do not spy on one another’ (Quran: 49:12)
• 'Do not enter any houses except your own homes unless you are sure of their occupants' consent' (Quran: 24:27)
• Precedents on right to privacy in early Islamic history that establish limitations on the state
• Spying and intercepting communication of any type is prohibited
• Data without consent should not be stored or used

AI & Islam: Navigating Moral Dilemmas

• Automation makes moral problems engineering problems
• Example: Driverless Cars
• Imam Ghazali explored questions like the Trolley Problem in the 10^th century. Hint: Uncertainty plays a major role
• 4 major schools of legal thought in Sunni Islam and 1 in Shia Islam: Different possible answers to the same question

​

AI & Islam: (Digital) Afterlives

• We can now create simulations of people who have passed away
• What implications does that have on the grieving process?
• How does that impact how we relate to death?
• How does that impact our conceptions of afterlife?

Summary

• There are multiple Islamic perspectives on AI
• AI is already influencing day to day practices of Muslims
• The Islamic tradition has a history of speculative thinking which can be a guide to think about technologies like AI

Interfaith Work in AI: Ask the Rab-AI

(36) Ask the Rabb-AI (Rabbi Fixler Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon 5784) - YouTube

How the world of death and funerals has become fashionable through digital culture

The Griefbot That Could Change How We Mourn

Relevant Links

​

Michael Running Wolf

​

He is Lakota and Cheyenne, was raised in rural Montana with intermittent water and electricity; naturally Michael is a Computer Scientist, former engineer for Amazon’s Alexa, taught at Northeastern University, and Co-Founder and Lead Architect First Languages AI Reality. Michael uses AI to reclaim Indigenous Languages and has been awarded an MIT Solve Fellowship, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and the Patrick J. McGovern AI for Humanity Prize.

​

Please fill out this icebreaker!

Panel

Panelists

​

Faith and AI Social

Neurips 2023

​

Ice Breaker Results

View here

AI and Faith

• Interested in joining AI and Faith’s work on AI Ethics for Human Flourishing?  Please go to aiandfaith.org or admin@aiandfaith.org
• Learn more about becoming an Expert or Member by emailing  people@aiandfaith.org
• Subscribe to our mailing list.
• Give us an idea for a feature or news at editor@aiandfaith.org
• Tell us about conferences, podcasts, and your own speaking activity by contacting programs@aiandfaith.org
• Have an idea for a research project? Reach out to research@aiandfaith.org

​

​

​

AI @ ASA: American Scientific Affiliation Annual Meeting July 25-29, 2024�Washington DC

ASA: Scholarly/Professional Society for Christians in Sciences & Tech

​

Pre-events: Conference w AI & Faith, Retreat for Underrepresented Grad Students

​

Recruiting AI & Christianity Talks & Posters

​

Student & Early Career Scholarships

​

https://network.asa3.org/mpage/ASA2024

Or email Hannah Eagleson at hannah@asa3.org

Christians in AI

Christians in AI (bit.ly/chai-global) is a global collective of people interested in the intersection of AI and Christianity.

​

​

Some highlights:

October 2023: Divine Wisdom > Artificial Intelligence Talk with Joanna Ng, CEO of Devarim and had a seven-year tenure as the Head of Research IBM Canada

September 2023: Some folks from CHAI were featured in an Christianity Today article: AI Will Shape Your Soul.

ICML Meetup Pic:

​

​