Insight, Idolatry, and AI I Prof. Jordan Wales

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Prof. Jordan Wales examines how AI-aided decision making and bias in fields like medicine and criminal justice risk reducing human engagement to idolatrous control, urging that technology must serve authentic love and responsibility rather than replace genuine insight and ethical discernment.

This lecture was given on June 11th, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies.

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About the Speakers:

Jordan Wales is Associate Professor and John and Helen Kuczmarski Chair in Theology at Hillsdale College, where he teaches historical theology. His scholarship—appearing in journals such as Augustinian Studies, the Journal of Moral Theology, and AI & Society—focuses on early Christianity as well as theology and Artificial Intelligence. Holding degrees in Engineering (B.S.), Cognitive Science (M.Sc.), and Theology (Dip.Theol., M.T.S., Ph.D.), he is a member of the AI Research Group for the Centre for Digital Culture, under the Dicastery of Culture and Education at the Holy See; a fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion; and a fellow of the Centre for Humanity and the Common Good.

Keywords: AI Bias, Decision Making, Ethics, Idolatry, Insight, Medicine, Neural Networks, Predictive Policing, Responsibility, Technology

Transcript

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0:00.0	Secular campuses are being transformed, but the students need your help.
0:03.6	Last year, students at 41 secular universities asked to start TI chapters.
0:08.6	Only 10 can be funded. The rest are still waiting.
0:11.5	Please, give a student a yes they've been praying for.
0:14.6	They're ready, but they can't share the truth without you.
0:17.5	Your gift before September 15th can launch a new TI chapter and change lives. Go to
0:22.8	to temistic institute.org slash donate or use the link in this episode to give today.
0:31.1	Welcome to the Timistic Institute podcast. Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual
0:36.3	tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:40.3	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Thomistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:46.3	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at to mystic institute.org.
0:52.3	My final talk for this collection is entitled Insight, Idolatry, and AI, and I want to focus in
0:59.8	particular on AI-aided decision-making and the phenomenon of AI bias in the fields of medicine and
1:08.3	criminal justice.
1:11.6	There are a few relevant points from previous talks that I want to pick up on
1:15.6	and remind us of in order to weave them through the talk I'll give today.
1:20.6	And in the first place, on the first day, I distinguished between intelligentsia
1:25.6	as the subjects, the rational, relational subjects hold,
1:30.3	an experienced intuitive hold or a self-orientation toward reality or toward some object
1:38.3	through loving judgment. So we set ourselves in relation to something outside ourselves, and this is what understanding is for the early church fathers, especially Augustine.
1:50.0	And then the modern sense of artificial intelligence
1:55.0	refers to a system's behavioral efficacy.
	...

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