Spiritualities, ethics, and implications of human enhancement and artificial intelligence

Christopher Hrynkow received his PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Manitoba, and a ThD in Christian Ecological Ethics from the University of Toronto. He is an associate professor in Religion and Culture at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, where he teaches courses in Religious Studies, Catholic Studies, Peace Studies, and Critical Perspective on Social Justice and the Common Good. He also serves as the founding director of the Centre for Faith, Justice, and Reason at the college, and is Department Head and Undergraduate Chair of Religion and Culture for the University of Saskatchewan.  

Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading inventors, thinkers, and futurists, with a thirty-year track record of accurate predictions. Called ‘the restless genius’ by The Wall Street Journal and ‘the ultimate thinking machine’ by Forbes magazine, he was selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. Magazine, which described him as ‘the rightful heir to Thomas Edison’. PBS selected him as one of the ‘sixteen revolutionaries who made America’.

Ray was the principal inventor of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Among Ray’s many honors, he received a Grammy Award for outstanding achievements in music technology; he is the recipient of the National Medal of Technology, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, holds twenty-one honorary Doctorates, and honors from three U.S. presidents. Ray has written five national best-selling books, including New York Times best sellers The Singularity Is Near (2005) and How To Create A Mind (2012).

Christopher Benek is the Pastor and CEO of The CoCreators Network. He is a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) Pastor who has served churches in New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina and Florida. Across the globe, he is considered a leading expert regarding Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology. The Rev. Dr. Benek is regularly featured in media sources worldwide. He is a frequent speaker who is internationally known for his social and religious commentary. You can read more about him at www.christopherbenek.com.

Jacob Boss is a doctoral candidate and associate instructor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, and editorial assistant at the Journal of American Academy of Religion. His research focuses on transhumanism and the do-it-yourself human augmentation movement.

Philip Reed-Butler is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Theological Studies Department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. His work primarily focuses on the intersection of neuroscience, technology, spirituality and race. His is the author of “Making Enhancement Equitable: A Racial Analysis of the Term ‘Human Animal’ and the Inclusion of Black Bodies in Human Enhancement” (Journal of Posthuman Studies, 2018). He recently completed his first book project entitled Black Transhuman Liberation Theology, which imagines what might happen if Black people utilized technological advancements to enhance both Black spiritualities and Black bodies in the struggle of materializing liberating realities.

Michael Caligiuri is an alumnus of the University of Manitoba and the University of Ottawa, where he earned degrees in both the sciences and humanities, and a PhD in Religious Studies. He is a Research Fellow of St. Paul’s College and an instructor in Catholic Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Manitoba. His areas of focus include religious and secular bioethics, issues in body modification technology, cybernetics and nanotechnology, as well as science, ethics, and religious systems.

Irene J. Dabrowski is Associate Professor of Sociology at St. John’s University, Staten Island Campus, New York City, where she served as Chair of the Division of Social Sciences for a decade. Dr. Dabrowski’s main areas of expertise are futurology, the sociology of health and illness, urban sociology, women’s studies, and the sociology of education. Her research and teaching incorporate interdisciplinary, holistic, and systems thinking. She has published an article (with Anthony L. Haynor), “Valuing the Future,” in a World Future Society volume. As a Visiting Scholar at The Hastings Center (a think tank that focuses on biomedical ethics), Dr. Dabrowski investigated the ethical dimensions of holistic health care, integrating the work of the quantum physicist David Bohm into this project. Since 2005, she has served (with Anthony L. Haynor) as Co-Coordinator of the New Jersey Chapter of the World Future Society. Dr. Dabrowski is an advisory board member of the Lifeboat Foundation, an international think tank that assists humanity in addressing the existential risks and misuses associated with technology. As a member of SENCER (Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities), she has attended summer institutes on science education and its implications for student civic engagement. Dr. Dabrowski is as a Liaison Board Member of the East Coast Colleges Social Science Association (ECCSSA) and has served as Associate Editor of The ECCSSA Journal, where she published an article on the post-positivist paradigm that called for a revision of social science in response to the Singularity. Her recent scholarship has critiqued artificial intelligence and a transhumanist worldview in an emerging electronic civilization, drawing on the insights of Catholic Social Thought.

Mark Graves is Visiting Research Assistant Professor at University of Notre Dame’s Center for Theology, Science, and Human Flourishing with his research occurring at the intersection of artificial intelligence, psychology, and theology. He earned his doctorate in computer science at the University of Michigan in the area of artificial intelligence, completed a postdoctoral fellowship in genomics at Baylor College of Medicine as one of the first computer scientists to work on the Human Genome Project, and worked in biotechnology and pharmaceutical research for ten years before studying systematic and philosophical theology at Graduate Theological Union (GTU) and Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. He has published forty technical and scholarly works in computer science, biology, psychology, and theology, including the books Designing XML Databases (2002), Mind, Brain, and the Elusive Soul (2008) and Insight to Heal: Co-Creating Beauty Amidst Human Suffering (2013) and taught courses engaging the relationship between science and religion at Santa Clara University, the Graduate Theological Union, University of California Berkeley, Fuller Theological Seminary, and the University of Notre Dame. His current research in cultural analytics and machine ethics uses semantic text analysis to create computational models of human morality.

Anthony L. Haynor is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. He served for several years as department Chair. Dr. Haynor’s main areas of interest are sociological theory, social problems, self and society, the sociology of knowledge, and social change. In his book, Social Practice: Philosophy and Method (Kendall/Hunt, 2003), Dr. Haynor presented a communitarian method for social problem-solving. More recently, he contributed a chapter, “Classical Sociological Theory,” to the Cambridge Handbook of Sociology (2017). Dr. Haynor has published (with Irene J. Dabrowski) in the area of futurology and has given presentations at the World Future Society Annual Meetings. He has also published (with Irene J. Dabrowski) on Catholic Social Thought, most recently on the contribution of the document, Gaudium et Spes, to an analysis and assessment of the transhumanist movement. Dr. Haynor is currently working on integrating the human sciences in the service of maximal human flourishing in a civilizational epoch characterized by ever increasing instrumental rationality, demographic diversity, concentrations of wealth and authority, and global interdependence.

Braden Molhoek works at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, is a Lecturer in Science, Technology, and Ethics at the Graduate Theological Union, and is a Lecturer in the School of Engineering at Santa Clara University. He teaches courses on science and religion, ethics, software ethics, and bioethics. Having been interested in the intersection of science and religion since he was a double major in genetics and religion, Molhoek has published and presented on a variety of topics, including genetic engineering and virtue, theological anthropology in light of science, cloning, gene patents, and transhumanism.

Peter Robinson is Professor of Computer Technology at the University of Cambridge, where he works on problems at the boundary between people and computers. This involves investigating new technologies to enhance communication between computers and their users, and new applications to exploit these technologies. His recent work has included desk-size projected displays, emotionally intelligent interfaces and applications in semi-autonomous vehicles. This has led to broader explorations of what it means to be human in an age of increasingly human-like machines.

Una Stroda is a musician and a theologian. A native of Latvia, she currently resides in Chicago, IL. She holds degrees in piano performance, in ecumenical studies, in cross-cultural theology, and is a recent PhD graduate from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Her dissertation explores biblical, historical, and theological aspects of laughter in relation to the divine: the laughing God, the presence and absence of laughter in scriptures and the Christian tradition, and eschatological perspectives of human laughter.

Tracy J. Trothen is a professor of ethics at Queen’s University, jointly appointed to the School of Religion and the School of Rehabilitation Therapy where she teaches in the graduate Aging and Health Program. She is an ordained minister in The United Church of Canada, a certified Supervisor-Educator in Clinical Spiritual Health (CASC), and a Registered Psychotherapist (CRPO). Trothen’s areas of research and teaching specialization include: embodiment, biomedical and social ethics, Christian theology, spiritual health, aging, human enhancement technologies, and sport. Trothen is the author of Spirituality, Sport, and Doping: More than Just a Game (2018). Her other recent books include Winning the Race? Religion, Hope, and Reshaping the Sport Enhancement Debate (2015), and the anthology Religion and Human Enhancement: Death, Values, and Morality co-edited with Calvin Mercer (2017). She is currently at work, with Calvin Mercer, on a study guide tentatively entitled Living Healthy for 500 Years and Other Technological Enhancements: Heaven or Hell? Trothen is a member of the American Academy of Religion's Human Enhancement and Transhumanism Unit Steering Committee.

Alan Weissenbacher served many years as a counselor to homeless addicts, removing them from the urban setting and empowering them to run a farm while receiving counseling, spiritual care, and job training. His work with these clients inspires his research into neuroscience and spiritual formation, exploring ways to improve religious care and addiction recovery through understanding how the brain works. Recent publications include the chapter on neuroscience and religion in the textbook, Religious and Science edited by Gary Ferngren and an article exploring the neural correlates of instantaneous and gradual religious change published in Zygon. He is the book review editor for Theology and Science and is a father to two young boys.