lectual project: Where does hope come from in the world we actually find ourselves in today? And that larger frame was at the forefront of the conversations in CTI’s workshop. This perspective is perhaps best expressed by comments shared by Director Tom Greggs towards the end of the workshop. He named two main themes that emerged from conversations across the workshop. First, returning to the wider project on hope: What are the “loci of hope”? Where do we turn to find hope? And second, turning more specifically to AI: What does it mean to be human, when what makes us distinctive can no longer be that we are the “apex of creation”? I’m far more interested in these questions than the ones I find many of my colleagues in cognitive science asking. That’s not because I think the science being done in my department or any other is unthoughtful or bad. I’m lucky to be surrounded by fantastic scientists in the form of friends, mentors, and colleagues. I think they’re thinking about their work carefully. I think everyone cares about making good, evidence-based arguments, about motivating them well, about making tractable progress. I respect the work. I’m just also not convinced it can even approach the most interesting questions. Getting to hang around CTI for the last year has let me experience a place where I think people are at least thinking about those questions. And while I am not a theologian, I find myself convinced when Dr. Greggs said that CTI ought to be part of addressing these questions because “ancient resources of faith may have something to say to the problems of today.” I’m not sure exactly what it is that faith might have to say, but I think that any sort of shared text, community, or practice that has accompanied so much of human history is worth paying attention to. I also want to pay attention to anything that feels like the opposite of AI: things which are slow, difficult to explain, accompanied by emotional or artistic or even spiritual reactions that cannot always be captured by the intellectual, and which involve people coming physically together in the same place. And surely theology has something to say about that.
When I first learned that AI was CTI’s first area of focus for their new research project, I’ll admit that my first reaction was disappointment. The fact that even CTI was thinking about AI felt like, to borrow the drama of CTI’s own language, a source of despair. Even theologians, even in a center like this in a project untouched by big tech grants, weren’t immune from the AI craze. I was here because I wanted to think about questions that went beyond my field and my own projects; in no small part, that meant wanting to think about something other than AI. I suppose I was hoping to find at least one place untouched by the way that generative AI was changing the world. Several months in, and on the other side of CTI’s workshop on technology and AI, I’m happy to say that was the wrong first impression. I find it hopeful that such a place as CTI exists, where people are trying to have these conversations. I agree with Dr. Greggs’ final closing words that “At our very best this is what we should be doing.” “This” is having conversations about theology across different people, areas, spheres of work, and expertise—and doing so in ways that bear on existential, human questions. This workshop included people who are leading librarians working in digital humanities, journalists and writers, podcasters, a poet, an English professor…not to mention the cohort of visiting scholars who have spent the last year thinking about AI from their respective perspectives. While this kind of interdisciplinary engagement is not at all easy, it is encouraging to find a place where it’s being actively attempted. Being in a room that is even trying to have that challenging, messy, existential conversation is exciting, fascinating, and ultimately hopeful.
Sarah Joo is a Social Impact Fellow at CTI, in partnership with Princeton University. After completing a master’s degree in cognitive science at Princeton, she will enter the M.Div. program at Harvard Divinity School in fall 2026. SPRING 2026
fresh THINKING
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