To help Catholics grapple with the current state of artificial intelligence and what that implies for people of faith, Notre Dame High School, Lawrenceville, will host Dr. R.J. Snell, who will speak about “A.I. and the Catholic Moment” Nov. 12 at 7 p.m. in the school library.
Part of NDHS’ President’s Lecture Series, the event will be a facilitated discussion with Dr. Snell and Dr. Ana Samuel and will include a question-and-answer session afterwards. The event is open to adults and teens, and is free and open to the public.
An article written by Dr. Snell for www.TheCatholicThing.org and published in July is the basis for the discussion, which introduces the concerns about the absence of actual intelligence behind large language model apps like ChatGPT and Grok, and how its limitations might be understood from a Catholic view.
“They lack the capacity for judgment or an experience of reality allowing them to engage in those second-order reflections typical of rational entities to see if a statement corresponds in any meaningful sense with primary reality,” he wrote. “The so-called ‘hallucinations’ of AI are good indicators of this fact.”
Dr. Snell is director of academic programs and editor-in-chief of “Public Discourse,” the online journal of for the Witherspoon Institute, a 501(c)3 research center located in Princeton. “Public Discourse” focuses on enhancing public understanding of the moral foundations of free societies. Its authors write on a wide array of topics in a variety of academic disciplines, united by the idea that truth should inform politics and culture. Dr. Snell is also an executive committee member of the Aquinas Institute, the Catholic campus ministry of Princeton University, author of eight books and a multitude of essays and articles. He is a visiting instructor at Princeton University and has lectured at dozens of universities in the United States and Europe.
A parent of two current NDHS students, Dr. Samuel is a graduate of Princeton University and The University of Notre Dame, Ind., and was the first executive director of the Witherspoon Institute at its foundation in 2003. Now focusing on research and teaching, her projects include family structure studies, such as editing “No Differences? How Children in Same-Sex Households Fare” as well as directing the development of the “Family Structures Studies” website. In 2013, she helped to launch CanaVox, a marriage and sexual-integrity movement promoting reading and discussion groups around the world that feature up-to-date research.
To register for the event, click HERE.
Notre Dame High School is located at 601 Lawrence Road.