When Philosophy Meets Artificial Intelligence

Year 12 Philosophy of Ideas (POI) students had the privilege to be with Dr. Chris Mulherin from Christianity & Science in Conversation (ISCAST) to learn and discuss about AI, transhumanism and techno-extremism, and what are some of the issues related to them. Dr. Mulherin introduced the definition of artificial intelligence (AI) as “[something that is] artificial, but it appears intelligent” such as driverless cars, Boeing 737 Max, social media algorithms or large language models such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini. Students also engaged in two discussion questions, 1) What do you look forward to about future technology? What worries you?, and 2) Should we genetically engineer future humans to make them better people? What is the problem with that?

This session was valuable for students as many ethical questions regarding AI has been raised with students, and to learn how some of the concepts like ‘transhumanist vision’ and ‘techno-redemption’ are trying to replace biblical values, which upholds “to do good and to serve God". Through this session, we hope students were able to recognise how some of the cultural meta narratives are trying to influence how we live in this age of AI and to know how Christians have special purpose in this world to live beyond cultural narratives to live out with Godly values in faith.

Jae Park

Secondary Teacher