What is artificial intelligence? The rapid spread of ChatGPT and its competitors is accompanied by a widespread view that AI is an artificial form of intelligence. This phrase might seem innocuous, but I believe it’s both misguided and dangerous. We commonly take intelligence as an indicator of sentience, because until Read more…
The revolution being brought about by generative artificial intelligence (“genAI”) is a profound one. The advent of writing tools like ChatGPT is having far-reaching impacts in many areas of the economy and our societies. Workers can now generate the text of emails, internal reports and even publications in seconds by Read more…
What are universities for? There may be more answers to this question than there are academics in a typical philosophy department. And surely we do need different answers according to who asks the question. The challenge to justify the existence and importance of my academic activities has confronted me increasingly Read more…
“If it is to be governed essentially by the ground motive of the Christian religion, a scientific practice of economics should not be limited to the field of so-called economic policy. It needs to start with a reformation of the foundations of economic theory itself.”[1] So said Herman Dooyeweerd in Read more…
This is the text of a sermon I preached at our university chapel recently (with slight modifications for context). What do Moses and Daniel have in common? Reading the account of the birth and upbringing of Moses in Exodus chapter 2 recently made me see a connection with the life Read more…
I’d like to share a great blog post by Adam Mastroianni at Experimental History. Entitled “There are no statistics in the Kingdom of God“, it naturally caught my attention, and held it even once I realised that it wasn’t seeking an authentic Christian perspective. No stats in the Kingdom of Read more…
About three years ago, I became a dog owner for the first time. We have a small, fluffy creature who scampers around the house and garden, eats whatever she’s allowed to, and sometimes gets away with snoozing on sofas and sleeping on our bed. Although I had misgivings about taking Read more…
A news story currently being covered here in the UK concerns serious serial abuses by a healthcare worker. One of the questions being addressed in ongoing investigations concerns why managers of the healthcare facility where the tragic events took place didn’t intervene sooner to remove the now-convicted murderer. I have Read more…
Economics is the subject I most wish I had studied earlier than I did. Although my school offered an A-level in the subject, a motivation to understand money and its growth and disappearance only arose very gradually over the following years, as I grappled increasingly with my own finances at Read more…
It was at the start of this year that Ruth Perry, the headteacher of a primary school in Reading, took her own life after being informed that the school she led (and attended as a child) would be downgraded by Ofsted from “outstanding” to “inadequate”. This story, tragic on many Read more…