Cambridge Forum continues its series AI: Servant or Master with Greg Epstein exploring the global worship of technology and discussing what prompted him to write Tech Agnostic. Epstein contends that technology has overtaken religion as the chief influencer in 21st Century life and community. He questions whether technology is deserving of our trust, and who profits from our uncritical faith in it? Epstein argues for tech agnosticism, not worship, and encourages us all to exert a critical freethinking perspective toward innovation, until it proves itself worthy of our faith.
Could you live without technology? Is technology a god-like presence in your life?
Speakers
Greg Epstein
Greg M. Epstein serves as Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT, where he advises students, faculty, and staff members on ethical and existential concerns from a humanist perspective. TechCrunch’s first “ethicist in residence”. Epstein is the author of the NYT bestseller Good Without God and has written for various publications including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and Newsweek.
Gideon Lichfield
He will be joined by Gideon Lichfield, journalist and science writer, former editor-in-chief of WIRED magazine and MIT Technology Review. He now focuses on the future of democracy and governance which he covers in his weekly newsletter, Futurepolis.
Video
History
The Truth at The Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul
James Carroll explores what has broken the modern Catholic Church as chronicled in The Truth At The Heart Of The Lie.
Technology
UNMASKING AI:
Scientist and artist, Dr. Joy Buolamwini discusses her book UNMASKING AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines. In it, she uncovers what she calls “the coded gaze”, evidence of encoded racial and gender bias, discrimination and exclusion in tech products.
Technology
A.I. and the Death of Critical Thinking
Until we know more about the cognitive effects of technology like ChatGPT, should we be inserting it into the classroom? And if, as recent studies indicate, it homogenizes thinking and creativity, are we content to let our kids’ education go into experimental free fall?