I will be giving a talk soon with the title “AI Isn’t God (or Even Human).” If you’d like to hear the talk, it will be the annual Carr Lecture at Mount Union University in Ohio. For those who aren’t in that area, but are interested in the new book that I have out about artificial intelligence, there will be an online conversation that you can join in on this Thursday. The Carr Lecture won’t be about teaching, although it... Read more
Robert Geraci passed along this information about an upcoming undergraduate conference in Religious Studies, and with his permission I share it here. I would like to call your attention to the opportunity for your students to join us for our second annual undergrad conference in religious studies at Knox College! Our theme is Religion In/And/Out/of/Time and we will host folks Oct 24-25. Please feel free to share this announcement with your colleagues also. Last year’s event was a lot of... Read more
I recorded an album of piano music over the summer, and have given it the title Hymnprovisations. It is now available. I recorded it at Crooked Creek Baptist Church where I am a member and where I regularly play the piano. If you enjoy listening and you are local, I hope that you will join us some morning. While I’d say the greatest strength of our community is the fact that we are united in love without any sense that... Read more
Real Intelligence: Teaching in the Era of Generative AI is my latest book, co-authored with my friend and Butler University colleague Ankur Gupta, who is a computer scientist. The book is published open access by PALNI Open Press. We hope it will be useful to educators. I’ve seen so many educators expressing panic and despair online. The book aims to tackle the widespread misunderstanding of the technology that is at the heart of this reaction. It then leverages an accurate... Read more
I am hearing a lot of voices circulating on social media that make me think the individuals in question to not believe that murder, such as the recent murder of Charlie Kirk, is evil. You may be surprised when I clarify that I am hearing this mostly from people who fit under the MAGA label. So let me explain. So many tweets and other statements have said about this lone gunman, whatever his motives and ideology, that “they” have started... Read more
It was absolutely delightful to spend time in Regensburg, a lovely historic city that I had never visited before, as the Society for New Testament Studies gathered there for this year’s meeting. I arrived early for a pre-conference featuring scholars from Eastern and Central Europe, which I am eager to support given my connection with this part of the world. In my family tree there is a Slovak theologian, which makes for another connection in addition to my connection with... Read more
I had the opportunity to have a really interesting conversation on Reddit about LLMs and reasoning. The person who wrote the original post expressed surprise and frustration that ChatGPT says things that are incorrect and then apologizes. I wrote, “It imitates speech. It has no mechanism for recognizing facts or information. They just happen to be woven into the speech patterns it is imitating. That you find what it does surprising makes me suspect you may not be aware of... Read more
Many educators continue to grapple with the place of technologies like AI image generators in an educational context. Here is an example of how they can be used for educational purposes. If you Google “Mary Magdalene” and click on the image tab, you will see a lot of art depicting the red haired penitent former prostitute. See my earlier post on the fact that this misrepresents Mary Magdalene, with the story of a student interacting with ChatGPT on the subject.... Read more
Here is something I did not expect to encounter today: the claim that ChatGPT can interpret speaking in tongues. ChatGPT Can Interpret Speaking in Tongues? For those who may not be familiar with the phenomenon and practice that is found in Pentecostal and charismatic churches, speaking in tongues refers to ecstatic speech that is produced in an altered state of consciousness. Although the articles I link to above claim that ChatGPT told someone they were speaking ancient Sumerian, I... Read more
CFP: Call for Essay Proposals July 2025 Interpreting the Hunger Games Prequels: A New Generation (Working title) Scholars, authors, and related professionals are invited to submit chapter proposals for a forthcoming edited volume interpreting Collins’ two Hunger Games “prequel” novels from a wide array of educational perspectives and disciplinary lenses. Following immediately on the heels of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Scholastic Publishing most recently shocked the Hunger Games fandom with the release of a second prequel, Sunrise... Read more
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