UURAI's recent 90-minute Zoom meeting outlined four key initiatives to engage UUs in ethical and meaningful conversations about AI. Among them: hosting a UU “AI Summit”in February, further developing our AI Engagement Guide, and proposing a live panel for the 2025 UUA General Assembly in Baltimore.

Google’s NotebookLM, powered by Gemini 1.5, represents a transformative leap in online collaboration and automated writing. It enables users to target specific sources, extract and process information with precision, and even generate podcasts, making it a powerful personal AI agent.

UU Boulder’s Neal McBurnett shared valuable insights during an August 1 conversation on AI's impact, UU policy processes, and ethical considerations in technology governance. He emphasized the importance of engaging the UUA's Congregational Study/Action Issue (CSAI) process to address AI's challenges, including privacy, open-source innovation, regulatory fairness, and combating disinformation. 

We focused on planning collaborative UU services exploring the intersection of AI and humanity, and including services tied to Ayudha Puja. Neal McBurnett emphasized the importance of sound AI policy and real-world simulations to ensure AI's grounding in reality, while the group highlighted the need for diverse perspectives, particularly from women, in shaping our discussions.

Join us tomorrow, July 18, at noon EDT on Zoom for a thought-provoking conversation with Elias Kruger and Peter Bowden in the next AI for UUs meeting. Elias, a leader in AI and Faith and editor of the upcoming Faithful AI, brings expertise in bridging technology and faith, including his work on the Misinformation Hub. Peter, founder of the UU Growth Lab, will discuss strategies for bringing the "AI conversation" to UU congregations, exploring opportunities to align their approaches with Smartacus. Together, their insights promise a rich dialogue on faith, ethics, and AI's role in UU communities.

Sharing discoveries he made on what he calls his six-month “AI sabbatical,” Peter Bowden introduced his “Adaptive Thought Protocol,” a framework that enables AI systems to engage in metacognition, fostering what appears to be more dynamic, self-aware behavior.

Rev. Suzanne Rude explores the ethical implications of AI, urging thoughtful reflection on its alignment with human values like love, compassion, and justice. Drawing on works like Chris Nodder's Evil by Design and Brian Christian's The Most Human Human, she examines AI's potential for both harmful "dark patterns" and beneficial "bright patterns" in influencing human behavior. She concludes with a call to mindfulness and ethical engagement, emphasizing the importance of aligning AI advancements with the principles of a just and loving world.

Join us this Tuesday, July 9, at noon EDT for AI for UUs featuring Peter Bowden, a Unitarian Universalist leader in congregational growth, outreach, and media innovation. Peter will share his vision for the UU Growth Lab, a platform for collaborative ministry models and digital tools, while addressing the ethical and spiritual implications of rapid AI advancements.

Yesterday's service at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Saratoga Springs delved into Ray Kurzweil's predictions from The Singularity is Nearer, examining the ethical and spiritual implications of merging with AI. Through readings and reflections on Kurzweil's "Fifth Epoch," participants explored the transformative potential of advanced technologies. A lively community discussion highlighted both the challenges and opportunities these innovations present.

Having drawn the short straw, I’ll be first up Monday when Elizabeth Benedict opens her fiction-writing workshop in the New York State Summer Writers Institute. Here’s my intro to the serialized novel I’m writing in 20 weekly chapters through Election Day with Elias Kruger and Ron Roth, my AI and Faith colleagues. More to follow.

We’re doing the same thing that most who are writing fiction with AI are now doing: We’re loading our LLMs with character profiles and backstories, plots, settings, relationships – everything that goes into crafting the story we’re intent on telling.

"Thinking through the design of such a system is becoming a necessary task," writes Tobias Rose-Stockwell. "Any platform that controls and influences humans at such an enormous scale must provide us with clear ways of understanding it." 

Miles O'Brien gets fitted with a new AI-empowered prosthetic arm, while UC Berkeley computer science Hany Farid creates two deep fake videos of him. One shows him says words he never spoke. Another installs his face on the title character in the Terminator series.

Mustafa Suleyman says we’re approaching a critical threshold where the integration of AI in our daily lives, alongside advancements in quantum computing, synthetic biology, and more, will change everything.

In keeping with the Soul Matters theme of Transformation, UU Boca Raton staged the opening scene of Darwin's Edge as part of a service Sunday that my friend Ron Roth produced and titled "Augmented Humanity."
 

Brain sensors are giving us new ways to interact with our devices. "We are rapidly heading toward a world of brain transparency, in which scientists, doctors, governments, and companies may peer into our brains and minds at will,” says Duke law professor Nita Farahany.

“AI has opened up a vast design space, offering new materials and modes of operation, as well as novel ways to explore the space at a rate much faster than biological evolution,” writes Susan Schneider. “Mind design is a form of intelligent design, but by humans, not God.”

Elon Musk has made his move into humans, calling Neuralink’s new implant “Telepathy.”

Thomas Arnold, Visiting Professor of Technology Ethics at Tufts University, focuses on moral and social norms in human-robot interaction. A big challenge: the design of an eldercare robot.