By Michael Hanegan and Chris Rosser
Welcome to the interactive form of our whitepaper. Here you will find ways to engage both the content of this paper and with feedback, comments, and questions that come from those who respond. Consider this the dynamic version of this document. While the text of the whitepaper will remain stable, related events, the supplementary materials, resources, and growing list of Q&A will continue to unfold in the coming weeks and months.
https://soundcloud.com/michael-hanegan-492204188/theological-education-and-ai?si=c14e45cfe17a4663b48cd65ea5e2236d&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
<aside> <img src="/icons/arrow-left_gray.svg" alt="/icons/arrow-left_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Listen to the Whitepaper
</aside>
<aside> <img src="/icons/calendar-month_gray.svg" alt="/icons/calendar-month_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Schedule a free, no-strings-attached 45-minute consultation here.
</aside>
<aside> <img src="/icons/help-alternate_gray.svg" alt="/icons/help-alternate_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Questions? Pushback? Feedback? Submit them here.
</aside>
This paper presents a detailed exploration of the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) in theological education. It proposes a framework to understand AI's emerging capacities, their potential to revolutionize theological education through enhanced pedagogical techniques, innovative research methodologies, and institutional advancements. It also highlights the ethical considerations necessary for integrating AI into this field, advocating for policies and practices that align with the core values of theological scholarship. The paper concludes with a call to action for theological institutions to proactively adopt AI technologies, emphasizing the need for strategic engagement to maximize their educational impact while navigating moral and practical challenges.
In an era where the term 'artificial intelligence' is as ubiquitous as it is fraught with misconceptions, theological education emerges as a fertile ground for a re-examination of these technologies. This paper serves as an invitation to a nuanced discourse on AI — beyond the hyperbole and dystopian narratives — into a space where it intersects with the sacred work of theological inquiry. Here, we seek to demystify AI, and set the stage for a conversation about its role and meaning in the context of theological education.
What was once the subject of science fiction, technical speculation, and the realm of engineers, computer scientists, and Silicon Valley startups is now an inescapable, and yet incredibly ill-defined term: artificial intelligence or AI. We are told that it is simultaneously an existential threat to humanity, the greatest hope for humanity, the future of business and learning, the end of art as we know it, and an overhyped fad that will will run its course and we will move on. It seems to be what “everyone is talking about” and yet very few people seem to know what it is that they are actually talking about.
While there is both great breadth and great complexity when it comes to the design, operation, and implementation of artificial intelligence technologies, we will introduce three overarching categories to think about the public-facing impact of these emerging capacities and tools, and particularly their impact and potential for the future of theological education. We will then briefly explore the ways in which this presents a fundamental shift in the way that human beings relate to the technologies they leverage, and offer a brief word about the dizzying acceleration of both the adoption and capacities of these technologies.
In this paper, and in non-technical settings it may be useful to think about artificial intelligence and the tools, applications, and platforms leveraging these technologies in three overarching categories: Analytical, Generative, and Ensemble. These categories are not designed to be comprehensive or official in any capacity, but instead to provide a common language from which we can explore the utility and capabilities of these technologies, particularly as they might impact theological education.
Analytical. These are the kinds of artificial intelligence tools that we take for granted and have been with us for some time. They are essential to recommendation engines (think Amazon and Netflix), our credit scores, autocomplete and autocorrect text features, optical character recognition (OCR) software (converting handwriting to text), and social media algorithms. These applications of artificial intelligence are about leveraging incredible amounts of data for dynamic circumstances and real-time decision-making.