Friday 18 September 2026 11:00am to 12:15pm
Faculty of Divinity
Over the past year, Prof Daniel Weiss has cowritten articles for the Harvard Data Science Review and Harvard Divinity Bulletin, probing “one-person dialogues” and faith community relations with AI. Join us to discuss both with Weiss & co-author Darren Frey.
Word cloud based on the two co-written articles.
About
It feels like dialogue with an extremely empathetic partner, and yet the reality is there is no second person involved. As “human-like” dialogue agents such as ChatGPT become part of daily lives, what risks are we taking in relation to other humans?
In the past 12 months, Prof Daniel Weiss has published a pair of articles on AI, ethics and faith in collaboration with Dr Darren Frey (Sciences Po Paris). Their first piece (in the Harvard Data Science Review) raised initial concerns about one-person dialogue. The second (in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin) considers AI in the context of prohibitions against “other gods” and the threat to human wellbeing when non-human objects are endowed with godlike powers.
Join us to discuss these two articles with both authors. We anticipate the discussion may range more widely, to include—for example—the recent Papal encyclical Magnifica Humanitas.
About Prof Weiss and Dr Frey
Professor Daniel H Weiss (Faculty of Divinity) earned his PhD at the University of Virginia, having received his Bachelor's degree from Princeton University, and his Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard.
Weiss and his co-author Darren Frey met at Harvard Divinity School in 2004. Frey moved into cognitive psychology, while Weiss continues to probe the breadth of Jewish philosophy and texts as Polonsky–Coexist Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Cambridge. Weiss is also deputy director of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme, and a long-standing practitioner of Scriptural Reasoning.
Prof Weiss was among the five key discussants at the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk’s 2026 summer programme (Historical Dimensions of AI, Power & Catastrophic Risk, 29 June–3 July), in dialogue with Yuval Noah Harari. They discussed culture, religion and living with alien intelligence.
Cognitive scientist Frey lectures at Sciences Po. He is also the founder of Ensemble Insight, advising individuals and organisations in the application of best practices in decision making drawn from state-of-the-art research.
Practicalities
Capacity is limited and advance registration is essential.
To support in-depth discussion, the indicated reading will be provided to those registered two weeks prior to the session.
Coffee and pastries will be provided as part of this session.
A Cambridge Interfaith Programme event (Religion in Society strand).
NB There is a fee for this session. A discount is available to those who book for all three sessions in this series.