An Image of an Image (of God): Athens, Jerusalem, and Artificial Intelligence – Dr. Kevin Kambo
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2026
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr. Kevin Kambo argues that AI should be understood less as genuine intelligence and more as a highly sophisticated form of simulated intelligence, like a mirror that reflects patterns without understanding them.
This lecture was given on March 10th, 2026, at Southern Methodist University.
For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.
About the Speakers:
Kevin M. Kambo is an assist
ant professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas in Irving, TX. Before completing his doctoral studies at the Catholic University of America, he earned a bachelor of science in Chemistry at Stanford University and worked as an intellectual property paralegal in Manhattan, NY. Dr. Kambo specialises in classical Greek philosophy, particularly on Platonic moral psychology and on the dramatic elements of Platonic dialogues. He also works on the reception of Platonic thought through history, from late antique (e.g., in Clement of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo) through contemporary (e.g., W. E. B. Du Bois and Simone Weil) thinkers, and has broader scholarly interests in philosophy of technology, philosophy and literature (especially tragedy), philosophy of race, and liberal education. He is a partisan of the original Star Wars trilogy, P. G. Wodehouse, and receiving postcards--not necessarily in that order.
Keywords: AI, Aristotle, Athens, Conversation, Genesis, Idolatry, Image, Plato, Psalms, Truth
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Tumistic Institute podcast. |
| 0:05.9 | Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square. |
| 0:12.3 | The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Tumistic Institute chapters around the world. |
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| 0:21.7 | Thomistic Institute.org. So this is going to be a little talk about AI and how we think about |
| 0:31.1 | it today. And I'm slightly changing the title from what was advertised, so not quite Athens, Jerusalem, and artificial intelligence |
| 0:39.9 | to Socrates, the Salmist, and similarly intelligence, and this will make a bit more sense, |
| 0:44.0 | it's a bit more targeted to explain what's going on. Now, part of the reason why I am sort |
| 0:48.6 | of thinking about this this way is everyone's talking about AI, everyone's to hear an AI talk, |
| 0:55.3 | but often people don't really discuss it. |
| 0:57.2 | I don't think from the perspective of what we might call the Big T tradition, whatever, |
| 1:01.8 | however we're going to understand that. |
| 1:03.7 | And so what I want to attempt in this talk is just offer a couple of ideas, let's say, |
| 1:10.0 | about maybe how we can rethink how we approach AI in terms of |
| 1:15.6 | texts that we know such as the confessions, which I'm a big fan of. |
| 1:21.6 | And one of the problems, at least in my mind, one of the major ones about thinking about AI is a problem of paradigms. So the sort of concern I have is it's new, it's strange, it's weird, |
| 1:33.3 | and typically when something like that shows up in the world, |
| 1:36.3 | we tend to talk about it in terms of something more familiar. |
| 1:40.3 | And the paradigm thing at least is interesting to me because at least classical philosophers |
| 1:46.6 | and their predecessors in many ways are often thinking about the world through paradigms. |
| 1:53.8 | And my idea is that we're in a kind of interesting, weird position where on the one hand, we tend to apply |
| 2:05.6 | mechanical paradigms to ourselves, or beastial paradigms to ourselves, which is sort of interesting, |
... |
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