Reunion 2025, Part 5: Faith or Reason? Nope! Faith AND Reason

Episode Topic: Faith and Reason

If you’ve ever struggled with the relationship between science and faith, this is your chance to get it answered by the experts! From AI and space to the Care for Our Common Home, faith and reason can not only coexist within each of us, but both can serve as a foundation for how we understand our world.

Featured Speakers:
-Heather Foucault-Camm, PGCE, M.Sc. ’23 M.A., Program Director, Science & Religion Initiative, University of Notre Dame
-Christopher Baglow, Ph.D., Academic Director, Science & Religion Initiative; Professor of the Practice, Theology, University of Notre Dame

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Transcript

Introduction and Personal Anecdote

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it's great to be here. This is the first time I've been invited in my seven years now at Notre Dame to speak to an alumni gathering. It's really exciting. I felt a little strange as I'm looking out at all of you, and I was trying to figure out why. I was like, well, we work a lot with Catholic high school teachers, but there's a variety of ages of the teachers that we meet when we do our programming for them. And then I realized there's a group of people in front of me wide awake and listening attentively. And that never happens in my house on a Saturday morning. So. Anyway. so my name is Chris Baglow. I am a professor of theology in the McGrath Institute for Church Life, and I'm the academic director of the Science and Religion Initiative. I'm here with my colleague and collaborator, Heather Food Bokan, who's program director of the Science and Religion Initiative. And I'd like to summarize the initiative. Core U in one quote that's not my own, is a quote from St. John Paul II in his 1988 letter to the director of the Vatican Observatory. He wrote famously, science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. If you wanna know what the wind beneath our wings are and all the collaborators that we have, you can just think about this quote. This is, sums up in essence the spirit within which, or with, with which we actually meet. Educate and equipped Catholic educators and leaders to integrate faith in science and the work that they do. And as part of that, I have the privilege of being able to teach undergraduates of faith and science course almost every semester here at Notre Dame. And every year I give a student survey and I put up about four of the questions that I got this January as we started this semester. And as you can see, if you look at those, we don't have a lot of time to meditate on'em or reflect on them. But if you look at those, you can see that John Paul II's idea about faith and science is not oftentimes reaching young people, even those who are very serious about their fate. Right? Notice that the questions have to do with reconciling faith and science. How? How do we let, how do we have both of those things, you know? Modern science and salvation. how will those both of those things go? There seems to be this idea in their mind that somehow as science advances, the religion recedes. And in fact, religion was trying to answer scientific questions. Our faith is trying to answer scientific questions, right? And now science is doing that for us. So no more need for faith. Christian Smith, one of our sociologists here at Notre Dame, a 2016 study that he did, found that 78% of young adult emerging Catholics, who no longer practice their faith, cite the conflict between science and religion, is the reason that they no longer practice their faith. Well, let's just remember what John Paul II said here. It's not that science of religiou or conflict science of religion have a great deal to do for each other, right? And they do those things in ways that are non, I repeat noncom competitive, right? So in that regard, I wanna do something very briefly as I prepare the day for Heather to talk about, big Brothers Pet Robot. But anyway, with the ai, I wanted to offer a couple of ways of distinguishing fate in science, right? And then I'm gonna give a couple of actual biographical illustrations of the points that I'm making. So the first part will be, the, is the how and why, as you'll see why at a moment. The second part is sticking with decision. One of the problems that we see is that people are confused about how faith and science relate to one another because they think they're trying to do the same things, right, when in fact they're not. So understanding that difference is always the first thing that we do in our work. So, without further ado, I wanna move on to the question of, or the distinction that I give here called How and Why. So we know that both faith and science are sources of objective, truth about reality, about the universe, and ultimately in the case of faith about the creator of the universe. But despite all claims, to the contrary, assumptions to the contrary, that could never be in any real conflict when we understand what they're doing. And these two quotes I think are wonderful in helping us. One of them is from the Lake Rabbi Jonathan Sachs. Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion brings things together to show us or to see what they mean. John Paul II said it a little bit more specifically for Catholics. The theological teaching of the Bible, like the doctrine of the church, does not seek so much to teach us the how of things, rather the why of things. That's our first way I think of helpfully. Basically distinguishing science and faith. So to understand that, I want you to join me in a thought experiment. Experiment. When I was writing my high school textbook on science and religion, I made this all about the New Orleans Saints because I'm from New Orleans, but then one of my grad students who had asked me to read my first chapter as I was writing it said, maybe you should do something bigger than football. So yeah, there's nothing bigger in my mind. But anyway, so I decided I would do the Good Orleans's Jazz at Heritage Festival again,'cause it had to stay, you know, as Hong. So I want you to join me in a thought experiment. Imagine. Have anybody ever been to the Jazz and Heritage Festival or just a great music festival? Raise your hands at some point in. Okay. Imagine you are at an incredible set from a favorite band at the fairgrounds, at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. And while you're there, everyone is. Jumping up and down, singing along. Right. And what they don't notice, but you happen to catch out of the corner of your eye is that an alien spacecraft has actually landed, as you can see, an alien spacecraft has landed nearby. And an alien who can understand and speak English,'cause they always can in the movies, right? Approaches you and asks you this question, what is that noise coming from the stage? And you realize at that moment that the alien has never heard music. So you begin by explaining what the music being. But you've been to the beer tent a few times, by the way. So you had a lot of confidence about your ability to explain things. You begin by explaining what the music being played is called. It might be blues or zydeco or rock and roll. And you start talking about the instruments in involved. You actually took some music classes and you play instruments and you tell'em a little bit about music theory. You know, like harmony keys, octaves. You've said all this to the alien. It was patiently listening, and once you've done the alien on it says, well, okay, now I understand how the music is played, but I don't understand why everyone here is so excited about it. And at that moment, you realize the alien has no idea about why music is being composed and what meaning it has to you and to the fans and to the artists. So you have an entirely different task of explanation, right? You told them how music is played. Ultimately, you might say that people love music because it moves them by putting the experience of being human into beautiful sounds, right? The experience life from a different perspective. Also, how it unites music fans and a common experience. Music is about relationships. So you might say it's about transcendence through poetry and musical artistry. You're taken out of yourself, right? So in order to explain the music festival to the alien or the music to the alien, you have two choices, right? You could explain the eternal logic of the music. You could describe how it is composed fl, but in order to explain the meaning of the music to those who play it or enjoy it, you have to go beyond how it's played and answer why questions about it. And that I think, offers an imprecise but helpful way of distinguishing science and faith, which is our first step. Science approaches the physical universe according to its internal rules and patterns, telling us how it all works. Like the first explanation of music you gave to the alien faith approaches the universe according to what the whole system of the universe means, why it exists, its role in human happiness, and questions about its creator and his intentions for it. Like your second explanation of music. So how questions and why questions about the universe, just like they are about music are very different, but taken together, they provide a fuller picture, a deeper understanding of reality. Now just throw a little, qualification in there and our language, how and why right? Can oftentimes be used interchangeably. So if you're ever gonna explain this to anyone, right, you need to tell them what kind of, why you're using in your why question, right? So it's kind of like, how did you get to alumni weekend versus why did you come to alumni weekend? In other words, when we use why questions, ask questions about purpose and about meaning. That's the distinction, right? Not why is there oxygen, which can be answered with a how explanation. Okay. Anyway, I wanna give you a second way of distinguishing them that I think is deeper and I think it's deeply, illuminated. And it comes from the late Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict the 16th. he made an interesting connection between faith and science and one of a presentation he gave called Faith and Theology. He said that both of them can be defined as thinking with decision. Both science and faith can be called thinking with decision. Both involve the use of reason by which one raises a conclusion about reality. And both of them involved in the decision to accept something as truth. A response of, yes, this is true. But he said what makes them different is the order in which thinking and decision occur. Right. So in science, how many of you are scientists or were science majors when you were here? Okay, we've got a few out there. Wonderful. Good. In science, if I'm getting it right, I'm a theologian, remember? So forgive me. The science must be, sorry. Deciding rather must be suspended from the truth of the hypothesis. For example, you can't decide in advance that this is what you'll find in the lab before the experimentation or the planned observation. The scientists that we, I work with, I'm on the board of the Society of Catholic Scientists, something you should check out international organization with 2,600 numbers all over the world now, and the biggest chapter is right here at Notre Dame, although I had to anyway, you can't decide in advance what you're gonna discover. That only comes later when something's been demonstrated. Then they tell me that most of the time your hypothesis turns out to be false. But you still demonstrated something, haven't you? You demonstrated that this was not. Right, right. What you thought it would be. But in faith thinking doesn't come first. In a decision, deciding comes first. It comes as an awe, a response to God's offer of himself. And now your mind has to catch up with your yes to God. Inger wrote in faith thought has not yet attained a decision in its own way, but on the basis of the will, it has not yet found its rest. It's still reflecting and still in a state of seeking. It's not yet reached satisfaction. It has been brought to an end only from the outside. In other words, God's brace has reached in and brought us to Unself, and now we begin to ask questions. That is in fact what theology is right? It's faith seeking understanding. Alright, those are two great ways of distinguishing faith in science. And in my own class. It seems like when we go through that's step, that's the first punch of the one-two punch. One of the second punch. I'm not gonna be able to give here'cause it takes too long. It's a history of where the conflict between science and religion comes from. And once they see how ridiculous that it's origins are, they kind of step away. But anyway, I wanna give you some examples, right? So I wanna talk about three individuals. The first one a scientists, the second one is sainted, and the third one is Sanc, who is a scientist, right? So we can see how and why questions animated their lives. And I'll do a quickly because I wanna hand the rest over next. How did I do so Friedrich Misha was a 19th century pioneer of the field of cell biology. He was interested in the nucleus of the cell at his time. Noble knew what purpose the nucleus served, nor what was inside of it. So when his lab assigned to him in 18 90, 18 69, rather to study white blood cells, he focused on the nuclei of those cells. But white blood cells are very common in puss. So much of his time was spent collecting bandages from a nearby hospital and going through a process that took weeks of extracting their nuclei, right. Ultimately, he extracted a gray chemical compound, not comparable to any other Don at the time. It wasn't a protein, for example, that was the most common time of substance or count band Fein cells. Isha named it Nucle, and he received the honor of publishing perhaps the most unat attractively titled article in the history of Science on the chemical composition of Puss. Now, later in his career, Isha discovered that nucle could be found on high quantities and animal sperm. So he thought it might have something to do with fertility and heredity, but did he decide that his best guess was correct? No. He was never able to obtain conclusive evidence of the function of Nucle, Inc. After stressing himself through overwork and extremely cold lab conditions, he developed tuberculosis. He died of pneumonia at the age of 51. Only after his death would nucleon be renamed Deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA for sure. And only a half century later would me's discovery become the chemical foundation of all modern genetics. So what we now understand about heredity, we owe to DNA studies and Meisha is kind of an unknown pioneer of that feel. He made it possible for the rest to be accomplished. So Misha's life exemplified the how approached to reality. Let's consider a life that exemplifies the why of pro, an amazing, modern example of holiness the saint and next slave Saint Josephine. Vaquita. Vaquita was actually born around 1869, the year Isha was started studying, why blood cells. But she didn't know the tri precise date of her birth. She was born in the Sudan at the age of nine. She was kidnapped by slave traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave markets of Sudan. Eventually, she found herself working as a slave for the mother and wife of a general, and there she was flawed every day till she bled. As a result, she bore 144 stars on her body throughout her life. And finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for an Italian government official, and here she was introduced to Jesus Christ. She learned there was a master above all, master A, a masters, a Lord, above all Lord, that this Lord was goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord knew her, created her, that he actually loved her. She was known and loved, and she was awaited. What's more, this deeply moved her. This master had been flawed like she has. And now he was waiting for her at the father's right hand. And as she wrote now, she had hope. She no longer simply had the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope I am, she wrote definitively loved. And whatever happens to me, I am awaited by this law. And so my life is good. Now, did Paquito withhold her decision until she could put it to the test? No. Did she create a hypothesis? Well. Most masters are cruel. But I will go through these procedures to find out whether or not Jesus Christ is as cruel as them. And if he's not, then no. She gave herself entirely over to God whose grace was already stirring her heart. Once God's grace touched her, she responded through the scientific method. Me. Sure. Health explained how we become who we are. Biologically speaking through were faith and Christ. Pita came to know the deepest meaning of human existence, the essential truth about why we are the deepest truth about ourselves. Isha, I'm sorry, petita was very active. She's founded a religious order, but she was not a big writer. Right? She did not have an education. And so her path was simple. We don't know about the theological questions that might have occupied her minds. We do know a little bit about my final example. Neil Stinson, also known as Nicola Steno because he didn't had most of the scientific career in Italy. He was a remarkable figure in many ways. He made fundamental contributions to four branches of science, anatomy, paleontology, geology, and crystallography. While still in his twenties, he was recognized as one of the leading anatomists of Europe. And so, although he was Dana and Lutheran, he was brought to Florence to be the court physicians to the Grand de Tussy, where he worked in a research institute that included some of Galileo's pupils. Various parts of the human body are named after him. Stensons, ducted, stensons of gland, Stenson's vein, and Stenson's Foramina. So those four parts of your body are named after this gentleman. And 1666, he was brought. The head of a gigantic great white shark that had been caught off the coast of Italy to dissect it. And he noticed that the teeth of the shark bore a strong resemblance to the tostones that were common on the island of Malta, and even on Gil sides in Italy. And so he realized that the tum stones, and by the way, aristale pondered these, nobody knew where they were from everybody. Some people at his time, the consensus was that these were probably natural formations, but he realized that these were actually ancient shark teeth and that mystified in them because the teeth as well as things that looked like seashells were found very often high up on cliffs and mountain tub. How'd they get there? And unraveling that scientific mystery led him to develop after much further investigation, a detailed theory of the origin of fossils. Of sedimentary rock that was very controversial at the time, but was essentially correct. He's therefore considered both the founder of Fossil study as well as the founder of the branch of Geology called Stratigraphy. When Charles Lyle gave his book to a young man named Charles Darwin as he was beginning his, voyage on the Beagle, Darwin read the book and there's a significant chapter de dedicated Justice Stinson, right Justice Stinson in Wiles book. Hence, the whole idea of the angel of the Earth required this man's, research and discovery. Lyle stood on the shoulders of angina. now Steeno was raised, as I mentioned, as a Lutheran, but after a deep study of theology and early church history, he converted to Catholicism. After being profoundly impacted by a Corpus Christi procession he witnessed in Italy. He wrote either this host is no more than a piece of bread and they are fools who pay homage to it. He said, or it really does contain the body of Jesus Christ. If so, why do I not also honor it? He left scientific research to become a priest and was soon elevated to the rank of bishop. In his last public lecture as a scientist, he offered the history, one of the greatest I think, descriptions of the relationship between nature, our grasp of truth, and the absolute mystery of God, and he did it standing in a dissection theater presenting a female cadaver as he did. So he started by encouraging his audience to be drawn beyond discomfort or disgust to a deeper awe and reverence for the human body. He said the path ahead was a path of beauty. It would move from observation to understanding two, faith and praise of the creator whose wisdom and goodness the structure of the body reflects. And then he said, beautiful is what we see more beautiful is what we understand most. Beautiful of all is what we do not understand. As Bishop, he was known as an ardent advocate for the poor, for whom he sold all of his belongings. Even as bishop's ring, he practiced rigorous asceticism, constantly praying and fasting. And on October 23rd, 1988, he was beatified by Pope Saint John Paul ii, who he started with, say, John Paul II will remark in his 1988 ification, if he is famous stenson for the discoveries made in the field of anatomy. More important is what he shows us with his life choices through the science of the heart. He found God the creator of all that exists and savior of the world. So in our work, we have always a called upon the intercession of this, hopefully one day to be canonized, the mess. So if you will mind joining me, blessed Nicholas Steno. Great. I'd like to hand it over now to my colleague who is gonna scare you with robots.

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and the Church's Perspective

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And the question you wanna ask right, is, am I here or am I a robot? I assure you. I am. You what? All right. I'm gonna make sure this works Perfect.'cause every time I do this talk, something hap fails with technology and I think this is the revolt of the robots. So my name is Heather Roca. I have the honor of serving as program director for the Science and Religion Initiative. I am a chemical physicist by training. we had some interesting discussions before I started this morning, about electrons and math and stuff like that. but I don't serve as a chemical physicist now. I work in the field of moral theology. So the church's understanding of how we pursue the good, and the reason for that change kind of infuses how I do, why I wanna talk about artificial intelligence. And the reason was this, I taught in a Catholic high school for 15 years while I was, raising, my children, from their infancy. And we had to, we had ask me anything you want day. It's sad that we have to program inquiry into a classroom, but hey. Oh, as, yeah, sorry. And I said, Hey, he's cried it. You can ask me anything you want. And a young lady sat right about where you are, ma'am said, well, I have a question. Don't be offended. And you're like, here we go. wish you believe more science and religion. So I'm an extraordinary minister of fully communion at my church. It was April. I had taught that young lady chemistry for however many months that is my father's, right? I can't do math quickly, and I'm not counting on my fingers. But in her mind, right? There was a perceived conflict between science and religion. And so given the fact that I'm, I was su scientist by training, I felt moral responsibility to take that up and to kind of speak from both of those worlds to the relational unity that exists between these two ways of knowing. And I think artificial intelligence is a perfect contextualization about what we mean between how and why. So. Get ready in 20 minutes, we're gonna go through what AI is and the church's response. I'm gonna make a case for the fact that the church does have a valuable voice in this discussion. Now what kind of discussion are we talking about now? Just as a show of hands, how many of you studied theology as a MA minor or a major when you were at the University of Notre Dame? Perfect. Okay, so the sources I'm going to use today all come from the magisterium so that they all come from Vatican, va. So if you wanna look these documents up later, you can take a look at these for yourself. And I would like to take a look at what the church is saying about ai. Now, this document came out relatively recently and what I would like to do is focus on the last sentence.'cause it kind of starts to pick up where Chris left off, right. That is that the church emphasizes that a gift of intelligence should be expressed through the responsible use of reason, right? Our scientific brain and technical abilities in stewardship of the created world. And that is how she chooses to articulate her wisdom when it comes to artificial intelligence. And we'll pick on, take a look underneath the hood in a second. And so what Chris is talking about, asking the question, what can faith and reason do for each other? We're gonna begin from the perspective of science, all right? And we're gonna seize on that last sentence, right? Responsible use with an idea of stewardship and his holiness, po I gotta get to correct num roman numeral and name together because I get it wrong all the time. Pope Leo the 14th, and one of the first things he said spoke exactly about this, right? And he talked about this technology and any technology before it. Then it comes after it being directed for the good of all. And as a theologian. I can say to you with a good degree of certainty that we have a very good understanding. And I said it three times of the word good. Is this a gift? And what constitutes responsible use? We're gonna play a game'cause it's a Saturday morning and you're right, normally I'm kind of a sip of my coffee right now. my daughter's joining us today. We sometimes are watching cartoons. She's right at the back. so what can this technology do? Well, quite a lot. and I wanna pick up on this idea of responsible use and what makes us human, all right? And how we have to care for this technology. What of these pictures, is a fake aha. All right, so we're gonna play a game, which arc is drawn by the hand of Michelangelo and which picture? Is Heather Fuku can being slightly bored in an airport going, I wonder what chat GPT can do. All right, so I'm gonna pause for 20 seconds. I wanna, we're doing this as a bit of a meditation on the power of this technology and what constitutes responsible use. Okay? Now we're gonna class, I've learned my lesson. I gave this talk to a group of priests, and I did qualify what I meant by option one and two and it was just chaos. So we're gonna, I pulled 75% of them just saying this is option one. This is option two. All right. So I'm gonna pause for 30 seconds, grab a bit of water and we're gonna have a vote. And I'm gonna encourage all of you to vote. I'm not gonna force you to vote, and I'd like you to look at each other. I'm very curious, once you've voted option one, option two,

4 (2) 29:37

say the question again.

2 (2) 29:38

So I'm gonna ask you to vote. In 15 seconds, tick, tick, tick. Right? 15 seconds. I'm gonna ask, which of these images is AI generated Option one or option two?

3 (2) 29:55

What did you ask j Chache, vt, what

4 (2) 29:58

question did you put?

2 (2) 30:00

I'm gonna tell you that after, because I'm building up here, right? Because, and I do this in a multitude of ways. When we talk about ai, the fact that it's very hard to tell which one is real or it causes a lot of angst, okay? In the minds of people who are contemplating this technology, and I'm gonna take a very mutual stance. I'm gonna warn you about that, right? I'm gonna talk about the concerns that we have from the perspective of science and the wisdom that the faith can afford us as we discern what stewardship looks like, but. Again, the question is, which is AI generated? This is option one. This is option two. If you wouldn't mind, if you wouldn't mind, could you vote with your fingers? One or two. Go ahead

4 (2) 30:43

soon. Got two.

2 (2) 30:45

All right. Now friends, if you wanna look at, if you wanna look at your colleagues, friends around the room, who's voting, I'm not leading you by the way. I'm doing this for a reason. Okay? And here we go. This is on the ceiling of the Sistine. Sh. Oh, just show of fans. Show of fans. All right, so the question back to your question, sir, what did I do? I asked it. All right. And notice the words that I'm using, okay? I'm using the word it on purpose. I asked it for art in the style of Michelangelo. Okay, now. I can give it 30 seconds. We're gonna do, we started a bit late, but I think this is part of the meditation to ask you now to look at these two images. Now that, you know, this is the fake, and when I start to talk about how AI works, this actually helps. Why do you think it looks fake? this one.

4 (2) 31:43

Where's two?

2 (2) 31:44

Yo, there you go. It's the i What about the i's, oh, well,

55 31:48

cross eye got a strabismus Or,

4 (2) 31:53

and or the face are not anatomically correct.

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No, they're not. Right. Anybody else? Maybe somebody from this side of the room. Yeah, go ahead. It was like Mona Lisa, but not always. Yeah. Yes, because this is how this works. Alright. When we start to talk about the utility of this technology, when I start to talk about it can be used only if or under these circumstances, right? We need to know how it works to make that claim. What has gone on here? Is that a algorithm or computer language has trolled the internet for images of Michelangelo that he's drawn. All right. That's its data and it's kind of stitched them all together. All right. I don't think that's ugly. I don't think it is at all. I You're right. And you what? Sorry, did you,

55 32:41

it just to be,

Ethical Considerations and Conclusion

AI's Role in Education and Society

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it could be a different artist, right? Art's designed. Alright. Art is designed to evoke conversation, meditation. Right. But I think we need to take seriously some of the things that you are now noticing. The eyes. Right. This is a composite. It's a whole bunch of data points dropped on top of each other. So the challenge before us is this one. Alright. We are in a new situation. Alright. It has prompted many people now, everyone in this room, now that some of you are duped by the fake art, sorry. Alright. To reflect on what it means to be human in the role of us in the world, because at the end of the day. That looks scarily close to the Mona Lisa, but knots, all right. And this is where I think we can go beyond how a I works. We can include that, alright, as we ask why we need to consider its existence very carefully, right? We can be deceived quite easily. Leo the 14th, shortly after his election met with the press very early on. And you know what he said about this technology, it has great potential and so we're gonna talk about that potential. But he said it needs to be carefully discerned and directed towards the good of all. And so when I talk about is this progress, how do we use it and all the things, those are the two mantras that we take. And that is the advantage that the church brings to a discussion of technology. And it's a conte context for how science and religion relate to each other. And I am now going back and forth wrong. So our objectives will be the follow. From the perspective of technology, AI is, and from the perspective of theology, AI is fourth. How and why or why, how and why. I got it. Right? Perfect. All right. How and why? So if we look under the hood, I think it is very easy, and I have to give my father due credit. AI did not come from outta nowhere. All right? and I think that's important. All right? It develops very fast, and we can certainly go down that rabbit hole later. All right? But it has a family tree, like all of us. The dates back to the 17th century, at the very least. And as we have been able to build better and scale smaller, my father worked for Cisco Systems, right? So the desk phone in my office, dad points out every time he calls, you know that I'm like, yeah, right. So as we could do things smaller and smaller, faster and faster, and we consolidated data. We then get to the point in 2018 where university courses exist in artificial intelligence. And there are many at the University of Notre Dame. But the beauty of this institution, an institution that we all love, is that the courses that exist in the engineering department and the science department are complimented by courses at the Institute for Social Concerns, right? And are part of the consideration of courses in the Department of Theology. What is ai? There are many different definitions I seize on the Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence. but I would argue that it is lacking, if I can presume, to criticize the people in Cambridge. don't tell them. and that is through human deployed systems. Alright? So this is something that replicates or tries to mimic who we are. Alright? logically, okay. Whatever computationally, I mean awesome, biologically. Alright? And there are human beings behind this. So when we ask, and my, it's buried in my handbag back there, but I apologize, Alexa, a question. All right. There are human beings behind that answer. That's what AI is. Alright? It is cross-disciplinary IT models and it replicates, which means that the response that we give to what this technology is properly used for must also be multidisciplinary. I say this as a scientist, there's one order of knowledge that I give to this conversation. There's a different order of knowledge that my theo theology provides as well. And what I would like to do, again, because to build a theological response, right? There's no point asking what is this for? If we don't know what the thing is, we have two ways of interacting with ai. Two broad kind of buckets. What I'd like to be able to do is just speak to you all with kind of like a general understanding. And I fully accept the fact that there are people in here, or possibly computer scientists and that this is a very crude way of divine. If you leave here with respect to AI thinking, knowing that it is not just chatting chat GPT we're good. I gave this talk at a parish and someone said to me, I'm never going to use ai. I'm like, okay. I said, do you have an iPhone? She goes, yeah. And I said, well, what model do you have? She goes, I have the 16. I'm like, low key jealous. I have the 13 mom. And I said, how do you unlock this? How do you unlock your iPhone? Facial recognition or voice? You've engaged machine learning. All right, so you've engaged artificial intelligence. Alright. Possibly. Some of you now are like, oh wow, I didn't even know. Alright. Right. How does it work? Well, we learned this, I learned this during COVID'cause I couldn't unlock my cone'cause I had a mask on. All but I would take my phone. I would go like this. Alright? It would get all those data points, blue eyes kind of like up here, down there, alright? It's a slight difference in my face, alright? And it would equate that data with Heather Fuco Camp. All right? All that. This is from math. Friends is a if X, then Y calculus. It's probability, right? How do we know that it works? And how do we know that probability is reasonably precise? My daughter's in this room, she tries to pick up my phone. All right? We look reasonably alike. It will not unlock for her, okay? Because again, all it does is pull data together and equate that to Heather. Okay? Voice recognition works the same way. This, all right, is also artificial intelligence. It has a language, all right? We call this algorithm. It pulls from now chat, GPT, the entirety of the internet as the information is being generated. And its output is not unlocking the phone. All right? Or its response to my question is not allowing me to kind of text while I'm driving to tell my husband I'm gonna be home in five days. This output is art. Okay. Or this output is the answer to a question or this output, and this is a strong teaching concern, is an outline to an essay. You know how you can beat this when you ask the students to contextualize their answer and their own personal experience? All right? It speaks to something very important to the Catholic intellectual tradition, and that is the value and importance of relationship, but I think it would be academically irresponsible to talk to you about, okay, facial recognition and then shot GPT and the teaching concern. Kind of lead you down a path where this technology kind of can be seen only negatively at the end of the day. Friends, when we talk about stewardship of our intellectual resources, this is a strong intellectual resource. How do we know where a hurricane is going to hit with greater precision than 15, 20 years ago? Artificial intelligence, when you look at the different models like the European model, the American model, and all the other models, alright, those are artificial intelligence. We can now give people greater warning than we could 20 years ago. Mammograms are read with greater precision. The heart surgery that I had three years ago, a decade ago would've been open heart and it's three months recovery and a very poor clinical outcome. All right, so to write this off as bad. I don't know if that's in our best interests to take seriously that there is some discernment that science itself cannot provide, I think is the way forward to think about how this technology, as this holiness says, can be used for the good of all. Each person and every person, I think remains a question that gets on this topic of what AI is for. All right? This why question science cannot provide that answer. What it can tell you is how the algorithm gives a very poor approximation of what the Catholic's teaching is on human dignity. I've asked it that question. It was trash, right? The sources. Like as a moral theologian, if you wanna test something, right, you test it with something, you know? So I'm like, Joe, I got it. Human dignity, right? The Harvard Business Review is not a citation for the Catholic understanding of human dignity. So we need to kind of take seriously the advantages of technology and its limits. So friends, from the perspective of the tradition, the why question, what is this technology fold? What constitutes responsible stewardship? When we talk about distinctions in our program, it is incredibly freeing as both someone who's a scientist in a theologian to kind of step back and say, this is not a question that science itself can answer, and why not? What the church is calling for. And I, you know, as a moral Theo theologian, we frequently get the Catholic church as the church of no. All right. Like straight up. Okay. But every time we think there is a prohibition, there is an even larger affirmation that's behind it all right? And every time we think the church is the church of no, you ask the question, all right, well where did you read that? TikTok? I don't know if you can read on TikTok, Twitter, you know, Reddits or whatever. So let's go back to the source. What we're being asked to consider with the beauty of the tradition affords us is not a return to the Stone Age, right? But can I ask someone, would someone like to like jump in and read this last piece right here? It's not a return to the stone Age, right? So it's not foregoing any possible good that this technology or anything that's down the pipeline might have for us, but it's this. Would someone read that for me?

3 (2) 43:18

Having the values and the Great Bulls swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grant,

Q&A Session

2 (2) 43:22

not pulling any punches. And thank you, sir. All right, so what it is alright is it's taking a step back, not with a view towards throwing away, right? But with a view towards seeing how do we see ourselves and where does this technology fit in? And Pope Francis of Happy Memory affords to us this, that the danger that what we, that we need to be careful of, alright, is when we see the tool as the source and summit of what it means to be human. When we allow it to replace us. And when we talk about distinctions, when we talk about the power of the relationship between science and religion, all right? What the faith provides us is an anchor that we are different, right? We are more than our tools because friends, if the source and summit of what it means to succeed is the iPhone. All right? Think about it. I was succeeding five years ago when I got my 13, right? I am so in need of success now because I still have that 13. But what was interesting is doing research for this talk, you see technocracy as like a creepy looking dinosaur. anyone wanna guess the age of this cartoon? 1933. All right, so we've been asking this question for a very long time, and depending on the time we have for q and a and socialization later, we can take up the discussion about what's different about AI now. And so what I would propose as we try to kind of land the airplane of this talk is that what we need to really think about what science is wholly. Completely uncapable of answering is with wisdom. What can this technology be used for? Right. As a replacement of us? No. All right. That's a substitive model. That is a model that science can't defend against as a collaboration with the tool. I don't think so. There's something different in kind and much more special about me than a hammer. Right. In an anthropocentric or human serving way. Absolutely. Right. Hurricanes, climate change. The fact that I am virtually touch wood protected from another stroke. Absolutely. Okay. We need to then take an honest look at ourselves to acknowledge our deep satisfaction with this, and that's why I brought up the art. Our deep satisfaction that none of these larger questions are being asked, okay, this is what it can do. What is this actually for? Right? Who's behind this technology? Alright? And when they're telling it what to do, what do they value? And is that what I value too? Right? And at the end of the day, it comes down to this, that faith and reason, science and religion are like two wings on which every single one of us rises to the contemplation of truth, not little T truth. Like, can I ask chat GPT to write this talk? Which I didn't. All right? But what is this for? What is it directed towards? And God and only God, not science, not a philosopher God himself, has placed in the heart. Each and every one of us, a desire to know this truth, to know himself and to not stop it because when we ask the questions we are asking here, right? When you listen to what we're saying and offer us, questions or feedback, at the end you get to know God friends and each and every one of you will come to the fullness of truth about yourselves. With that, I wanna say thank you very much for your attendance on a Saturday morning and your rest receptivity to what we've said and we have finished six minutes early. and we have time for questions should there be any. So thank you very much. and I also saw some of you taking pictures of both Chris and I's slide. I don't know if this is possible with, Ms. Kelsey, Ms. McKayla, but if we, if you give, if we give them our slide deck, can they, can you share it out? Yes. Yes it does. Does that make sense? Because we tried to like, pick stuff that you can access to use techie language. It's free and open source. so if you wanna read what the church has said about ai antique nova right? Old and new. you can read this for yourself. Our emails will be on there, so you can ask questions if you've kind of need to process. I'm I process slowly, so, yes. Yeah. Oh. Oh, that one. We have one, then two, then straight.

48:40

Amazing. Thanks so much. one of the things that happens among other things at places like colleges and high schools is we learn to u use things. That will prepare us for the future. So the nursing students learn to use a stethoscope. They learn what to listen for, they go out into the world and then use that tool in the right, with the right judgment on where, apply it, finance students, learn Microsoft Excel, figure, go do whatever. how should we think as both as parents and potentially as teachers, how to create an experience of learning and teaching that amplifies that both competency but also right relationship of judgment in applying AI in our lives.

2 (2) 49:17

That's a wonderful question. so the first thing, I'd like to point out in terms of texts to read. So I write, I'm part of a team that writes for the DeCastro fair Culture and Education on ai. So the recent book, the book before the one we're writing right now is called Encountering ai. So it speaks to some of this with a depth of theological pedagogical rigor that I can't kind of get to. The space for this question. So there, you're right, there's a balance to be had, right? Because, if my husband works here as well, he works in development and he sends me all the business AI articles and it's estimated that the next five years, over 40% of the jobs that are gonna be out there are gonna require some kind of competence. So stay, yeah, exactly. And I just learned how to use chat bt four months ago. So like, so doing this is a problem, right? but at the same time, you're right, there's a piece of discernment. I also have two children, right? So as parents and both parent, and a teacher, I teach a course on, the ethics of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Notre Dame. I have the same question and I think it comes down to, for our youngest who speak to the parent piece first.'cause it's parent and teacher and parents are the first teachers, but you know, for parents. I think it goes down right at the beginning to just technology in general. So at our house, I'm gonna put her on the spot. Penelope, we are not allowed to use screens on which day of whos who said Sunday. You guessed it. So in terms of our parenting style, our kids have plugged from scenes on screens on Sunday because before we get to the discussion of ai, although she's debated it in class already, we give them an understanding of what this, if I had my smartwatch, my phone is for right. It, we invite it in. We don't allow it to be all over us. So in terms of the parenting strategy first, all right, it comes down to understanding that this is something that you have controlled over. There are times when it's used and there are times when it's not used. In terms of my teaching self, I think that is a very interesting question when I wanna assess kind of discernment. The weighing of resources. I'm gonna be honest, I tell my students here, I don't want, I don't wanna see it. Right. Because with respect to what I am assessing, I think that is a bit of a problem.

51:42

Have you changed how you assess?

2 (2) 51:44

How I changed? That is a wick question. Yeah. Yes. and our students here, all of you are in this position, are incredible human beings, right? But in terms of the pressure and in terms of, again, highlighting the presence and utility of these tools that are present, I think the way we assess has to change. And I don't think that this is a bad thing, right? I think part of the Catholic intellectual tradition is this focus on you come here to learn science Absolutely. Or whatever, right? But you're here to be formed too, right? And so part of that has, part of this question has helped me kind of think about again, why I'm a teacher in the first place. It's about my subject and the person. And so in terms of how I've changed assessment and how I think about this in the classroom, what I will say. Is I ask my students to re-contextualize their answers, right? In their own personal experience. And I know when they're faking because I know who they are. Okay. I know them. All 40 of them. Yeah. Alright. Sounds a lot. Alright. We think about how we can assess through conversation, right? An oral kind of, oral assessment, right? It's not going backwards. You're actually able to get more out of the student that way when there's a conversation, right? I'm a lay Dominican, I'm gonna go back to Thomas. This is how Thomas did his thing, right? The medieval universities were much more dialogical. there are other pedagogical teaching techniques that help us kind of work with these resources. but I think I take your point quite well, right? That pretending that they are not there is a problem. And depending on the kind of context in which you are operate operative, it can be very helpful as a search engine, right? It can go, I'm learning about theology. You have to read a lot. Sometimes if you do a search for the church's teaching on X, you can get a list of like 40 things long, faster than I could do as a human being. And then you could pick those up. So I can speak as a theologian, as a scientist, but yes, I take your point. That was a great question. the next one was over here.

53:40

Thank you both for your time this morning and sharing your expertise and perspective. It's very provocative, if you would. So in

2 (2) 53:48

a good way, right?

53:51

For the purpose and service of others, not self. piggybacking on the earlier exercise, trying to discern the legitimate art from the AI generated fake. My question to you is what tools, you've given us the ideas, but what technical tools are out there for us to check if you would, you know, the fake news from the real news and the real art from fake art. What tools are out there? At the University of Washington, they brought the communication department and the computer department together. And the title of the course is calling BS on Bs, basically. And so, so what tools do we look to that are legitimate for us to help discern the difference?

2 (2) 54:34

Right? That's a really, oh my goodness. see it deceiving. There you go. that is a wonderful question. text, text. There's not a lot out there. in terms of my kind of teaching self at Notre Dame in terms of news, and I promise you this is not a planted question. I'm Canadian by birth. My mom brought up a news story about a year ago, in terms of like fake news on the internet. I'm from Ottawa. The top five things to do in Ottawa. Number. Okay. There's only five. the second thing, right? Poutine? Yeah. You what? Sorry. It's poutine. It's poutine. I'm la That's cut off. Sorry. the second one, sir, to speak to the point about the fake news. The second one was come dying at the shepherds of good hope, right? Many people have been fed, no one has left hungry, right? Do you four star restaurant? Do you know the people showed up at our soup kitchen looking for a four star restaurant? It was an M-S-M-B-C article. It's not the only one. Delta Airlines in the United States was forced to pay out a reasonable amount of money about a year and a half ago because AI put a bunch of things together and publicized, right? That there was a, like a reward being offered if you fulfill these criteria. I'm a Delta flyer and I was like, shoot, I missed it. So there are some tools to detect tests, right? Turn it in.com. For those of you that know what that is, it has a reasonable detector, right? For the news. Alright? It comes down to discernment because there is nothing out there, right? There is nothing out there. There are people at the University of Notre Dame who shall remain, God bless you, nameless, until they choose to kind of reveal the research. There are people here, bots, for instance. When you interact with something online, are you interacting with a real human being? Increasingly, no. Right? And the whole point of this research, right, is that the bad ones or the artificial ones cannot be detected anymore. It is incredibly difficult, right? So what is the answer, right? We have some tools to support our students, right? But how do we deal with this? And I would say that the beauty of our tradition is such that we have an emphasis on relationship and discernment. And we don't stop at the interaction with this thing. And so I would argue, especially where the internet is concerned, we are a lot more trusting of what we read online. This person included, then we are of each other. And I think we need to recover the natural kind of, Hey, is this real? Let me look again. So I think again, I see the, I hopeful, I as hope I see this as a room for growing in our discernment and research. Because to go back to your question, that new story literally had people coming to a soup kitchen expecting a four star. And by the way, you can't find it online anymore if you go check. I try. So anyways, a final question. I know we're over, oh, or did someone else have the microphone? Is that

4 (2) 57:27

she's,

55 57:29

this might be added to the first question and, this was brought up at the Deepak, yesterday also since you're both, yeah. as far as have you, or to, change or, modify your teaching skills and. And also is the Blue Book in, coming back?

3 (2) 57:47

It might be,

55 57:48

yeah. It's very good to,

3 (2) 57:50

yeah, I was pretty happy with the way this semester turned out. I had to do a revolution. I, I had, in my faith in science course I teach with almost every semester, I would have one or two significant assay questions. And these were thought provoking questions. They were questions where they would've to end. What I discovered last spring was that basically, I think I was starting to get homogenous answers that were more homogenous than that they studied together. And so I've now gone to short essay questions that are done in class three versions of the same exam, but they do it in Canvas and I'm there to make sure that Northern tabs are open or any of those things. I just wanna point out that for me, the saddest part about this is that I know as someone who's written and who's, you know, basically chose a career to write that, writing a first paragraph of something from your mind and your thoughts and your reading is one of the most illuminating experiences a person has, and that spark is just being snuffed. It's being snuffed by chat, GPT Heather's. Right. If you use it, like you might use Google, you ask chat GPT for resources, that's one thing. But what it's giving you what you would say or what you ought to say, and you're no longer generating that. Well, it's like that.

2 (2) 59:21

It's that. Yeah.

3 (2) 59:22

And it's, is it hard for me? Absolutely. It was hard for me to figure out which is which. Sure. Not all the time, but. But often enough. And how would I know if I wasn't detecting it and should have been detecting it? So I think that's the greatest parallel for education. But it's apparel that goes back before we even have to think about ai. The humanities are slowly being eclipsed. they're kind of, we no longer have literate people who think about life, beauty, et cetera, because we've gone so much towards productivity and education and profit from education, meaning getting an education that can give you profit. Right. Don't have any problem about making money. I wish theologians made more, but we're in it for the love. That's right. That's the love. But at the same time, those are gonna be the kind of people, because remember, scientific method, you can study all you want about electric theory. It will never, the scientific method and all of your research will never ever tell you whether or not you should electrocute me. Ethics, those things that comes from wisdom, that comes from thought, that comes from reflection. And that's what's being the cliffs, I think. And Chad, GBT is just accelerating what had already begun the decay that had already begun. So, sorry, I don't mean to end in a bad No,

2 (2) 1:00:47

but what I'd like to do is bridge, build off that and bridge our last Hello bridge. Our last question in our first question, right. About preparing for life. Right. And whether this blue book is gonna come back. my, our students did do some kind of in-class writing for sure. but how have we responded? We've responded by. Some of the projects that they do, I know you do this in your class as well. Yeah. Are group projects that focus on a presentation and a response to questions from the professor and their fellow peers. Why is this important? Because as all of us have been in the workforce, right, we know that to be productive in whatever line of work that you're in, all right? There's necessary communications at meetings, right? There's the presentation of one's point of view and the response to criticism and kind of interacting. And so I see that there may be room for the Blue book, but I think the response that we have made is focused on relationship.

1 (2) 1:01:45

Yeah.

2 (2) 1:01:46

Which goes back to who we are as Catholic educators and it goes back to a very important life skill that if education's just about like data to data and you don't necessarily get there. So I do see this with great hope. I think our, the way we assess and educate will ultimately change for the better. So thank you all.