Name: ASA Winter Symposium Watch Party -- Christianity & AI
Start: 2025-01-25T12:30:00-05:00
End: 2025-01-25T15:00:00-05:00
Location: Calvary Presbyterian Church

Come join us for a fun watch party at the ASA Winter Symposium as we explore the intersection of Christianity and AI!
About this Event

Welcome to the ASA Winter Symposium Watch Party -- Christianity & AI! Join us at Calvary Presbyterian Church for a fascinating discussion on the intersection of Christianity and artificial intelligence. This in-person event promises to be thought-provoking and engaging. Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to explore how technology and faith come together. See you there!

We will have some light refreshments starting at 12:30PM, then the presentation will start over Zoom at 1PM. It will conclude around 2:15PM, and then we will have a time of discussion for those that wish to stay to talk further. The event should wrap up around 3:00PM.

We will meet in Room UL8, which is the upper level of the church.

Here are additional details of the speakers and event:

"AI & Christianity" with Joanna Ng and Rosalind Picard. This free 75-minute virtual symposium is open to ASA members and the general public alike. It includes key elements of the ASA approach — an opening talk on a vital science-faith issue of the day followed by Q&A. We are delighted that ASA Fellow Derek Schuurman will be facilitating this important conversation.

Joanna Ng is a former IBM-er, pivoted to a start-up founder, focusing on Artificial Intelligence, specialized in Augmented Cognition, by integrating with IoT and Blockchain, in the context of web3, by applying design-thinking methodology. With forty-nine patents granted to her name, Joanna was accredited as an IBM Master Inventor. She held a seven-year tenure as the Head of Research, Director of the Center for Advanced Studies, IBM Canada. She has published over twenty peer-reviewed academic publications and co-authored two computer science books with Springer, The Smart Internet, and The Personal Web. She published a Christianity Today article called "How Artificial Intelligence Is Today's Tower of Babel" and published her first book on faith and discipleship in October 2022, titled .

Rosalind Picard is founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Laboratory; co-founder of Affectiva, which provides Emotion AI; and co-founder and chief scientist of Empatica, which provides the first FDA-cleared smartwatch to detect seizures. Picard is author of over three hundred peer-reviewed articles spanning AI, affective computing, and medicine. She is known internationally for writing the book, , which helped launch the field by that name, and she is a popular speaker, with a TED talk receiving ~1.9 million views. Picard is a fellow of the IEEE and the AAAC, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. She holds a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech and a Masters and Doctorate, each in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, from MIT. Picard leads a team of researchers developing AI/machine learning and analytics to advance basic science as well as to improve human health and well-being, and has served as MIT's faculty chair of their MindHandHeart well-being initiative.