Andrew Basden concludes his series on a Christian understanding of artificial intelligence. My first post here showed a way to address the AI question “AI = Human?” more fruitfully than is usual, by reference to multiple aspects of reality. My second piece described how AI systems (like X-ray analysis or Read more…
Andrew Basden continues his exploration of artificial intelligence. AI (artificial intelligence) can beat us at Go and Chess. AI let an automated car kill a cyclist. AI can analyse X-ray screens very well. ChatGPT can write essays for students, but they are bland and full of errors (hallucinations). A few Read more…
This week Bob Trube of Emerging Scholars Network writes on attentiveness as the hallmark of both holiness and good scholarship.
Do you ever feel like your time is being nibbled away – like no matter what you do, how carefully you plan and manage, something is always inexorably eating at the time you thought you had? It’s a familiar feeling for academics, and it’s also part of the inspiration behind one of the most striking pieces of public art in Cambridge – the Corpus Clock, or Chronophage.
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…
Andrew Basden takes a look at some of the big questions around artificial intelligence. “The debate around AI”, wrote Toby Payne, “is desperate for a perceptive Christian contribution”. In an email from the Good News for the University initiative, he went on to ask: How might the fact of our Read more…
Orthodox free-market economics, rooted in principles of self-interest, individualism, and limited government intervention, has often been criticized for its perceived divergence from Christian values. This critique stems from several key areas of conflict between the two ideologies, including the primacy of self-interest, the neglect of communal well-being, and the potential Read more…
I’ve recently got back to the UK after spending a year living in Toronto, Canada, for a postdoctoral research fellowship. This was my first full-time academic role after finishing my DPhil in 2020 – a Mellon Foundation-funded fellowship at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, a Catholic research centre dating 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…