These technologies strike a blow at everything I do and everything I value. All of this together undermines democracy to an unprecedented extent. Just as misinformation about issues makes it difficult if not impossible to be sure that one is adopting the correct stance on a matter of policy, deepfakes make it impossible to be sure that one has a sense of the views and character of a candidate. You can read the story courtesy of WIRED. Given my interest in misinformation and information literacy, and the intersection of religion and politics, I hope that one of the stories I end up commenting on is “Gods Behind the Masks” which explores the use of deepfake technology to influence an election in Nigeria. There is a high level of techno-optimism in the project even the stories explore situations involving misinformation, isolation mitigated only by technology-mediated interactions, unemployment, surveillance, and terrorism. I like that the panelists reflect a range of different backgrounds, perspectives, and areas of expertise, meaning that we will explore the intersection of artificial intelligence and religion in diverse ways. Many of them have religious themes to them and so it is natural for this book to be explored at AAR. I do not yet know how we are going to divvy up the stories among us.

Speculative fiction and speculative nonfiction working hand in hand.

The concept is one that immediately grabbed me: a book co-authored by a sci-fi author and a scientist, a collection of short stories and essays, the former depicting scenarios that the latter discusses. One of my appearances on the program of the American Academy of Religion conference in Denver in November is on a panel discussing the book AI 2041.

Ai 2041 review