Show Notes
Death isn't always an elegant ending. When Muhammad Ahmad, a research scientist with a doctorate in machine learning, learned his father’s diagnosis was terminal, he began to create a text-based AI simulation. Host David Zvi Kalman explores the successes and limitations of this process with Mohammed and Rabbi Ethan Witkovsky, who shares a Jewish take on "DeathGPT" and wonders if ancient scholars could enter the chat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from Belief in the Future
Earlier this month, the National Association of Evangelicals released a resolution on artificial intelligence. It's short, and compared to Pope Leo's encyclical, it is somewhat more pointed—especially with regard to AI having a soul or personhood.
If you want to have an impact in the world of AI, you need to speak the language of code. That's getting easier, but it's still not easy. And it puts religious leaders at a disadvantage.
When we talk about relationships with AI, we often focus on whether these machines are alive or sentient. But life and sentience aren't necessary for relationships; in fact, we often have deep relationships with objects and animals—and we often treat people like objects, too.
AI conversations have a tendency to become so big that you can't really locate yourself within them. For this episode we're flipping the script and talking about a longstanding conversation into which AI has unexpectedly intruded: women's religious leadership.
How does our inevitable deaths change how we live—and how does fear of loss change how we develop technology? Alex Sarkissian is a death doula and a co-founder of the Buddhism and AI Initiative; he joins us to discuss his recent article on AI and Dying. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices