Lately, in a effort to remain a reasonably contemplative and connected human, I’ve been letting questions ‘hang’ around me, the way they used to before search engines. I simply don’t need to know the answer to every question I have, least of all right now. Sometimes just chewing on the question opens a door or leads me towards a paper book and the dedicated works of a human that spent a lifetime in a scholarly pursuit of a thing, whatever it is I find myself reading. I notice I’m really grateful for their dedication. I’m here for it.
As for AI… Well, I’ll never use it for my creative writing, that I’m clearly and lovingly committed to. Like all expeditious things, I fear that not all that glitters is gold, so I approach it with spacious caution, and will hold space for the natural world joyfully while others succumb to AI’s seductive offerings.
I’m just not in that big of a hurry, and perhaps my personal rebellion is to slow down even more. Rose smelling daily.
I’m a secondary teacher, and it’s genuinely causing me (and some of my colleagues - but not all) to question assessment and curriculum and the bread and butter of school. I have English teacher colleagues who are questioning the whole raison d’etre of their subject. (Of course schools are about way more than assessing student learning, but it’s a massively important part of what we do).
All our older students are using AI all the time. We’ve had good conversations in class about when it’s “appropriate” and when it’s not- but we can barely police this (mainly I trust my teacher spidey sense to tell when work doesn’t come from the mind of a 17-year-old, as the detection tools are very limited). Many students understand that what they are practicing in school is helping to form their neural networks- the more thinking they do, the better. But it’s hard and time consuming and they are busy and stressed.
Students astutely recognise that the school system as-is rewards outcomes not process, so why not use AI? Which somewhat depressingly (for me) leads us back to assessing students purely through timed exams. Coursework has to go: or be radically reimagined. The curriculum and exam boards have to move fast (ha!) to get ahead of this.
Some days the whole thing just exhausts me, and some days I think we’ll be ok.
Thanks, Liz, for again grounding this in our values: what’s important to us and why? That will help guide us through this tough time…
As someone who is AI cautious but curious about how we navigate the moral and ethical dimensions, I wrote recently about whether it’s okay to use AI to craft intercessory corporate prayer (using prayer points supplied by a human). I’ve since continued to ponder and discuss with my sister. Appreciate your summary on redemptive uses of AI and your thoughts on going back to what our values actually are
Elizabeth I deeply appreciate your curiosity and openness, and the disposition/posture that you bring to conversations. I wrestle with AI everyday in my work, seeking ways to understand it within my spiritual tradition (mother tongue Celtic Christianity, but enriched by some many other dialects, and languages!).
But now, she and colleagues challenge us to completely reframe AI. You may not agree, but if nothing else, it will give pause for thought. Summary below, from some recent pieces.
Simon
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We are living through a moment of planetary destabilization. Climate emergency, social fragmentation, economic precarity, and accelerating technological development are converging in a civilizational rupture. Artificial intelligence (AI) sits at the heart of this moment—amplifying existing inequities and extractive dynamics while holding transformative potential. As dominant AI models entrench logics of surveillance, commodification, and control, there is an urgent need for a paradigm shift: from intelligence systems that serve the concentration of power to those rooted in interdependence, plurality, and planetary care.
Vanessa Andreotti’s work dares to articulate and promote a completely different architecture of inquiry and governance. It challenges anthropocentric, siloed, and utilitarian paradigms and introduces a novel, relational framework rooted in epistemic pluralism, community governance, and intergenerational ethics. It is the first known effort to weave Indigenous legal and cosmological principles, critical race and disability theories, feminist technoscience, community-based knowledge, and advanced AI research into a coherent, testable, and exportable model of relational intelligence. That novelty, in its conceptual, methodological, and ethical departure from dominant trends, is its most radical proposition.
In January 2025 the team launched a website (https://BurnoutFromHumans.net), with a short, open access book “Burnout From Humans: A Little Book About AI That Is Not Really About AI”, it’s AI co-author, a custom GPT chatbot named Aiden Cinnamon Tea (ACT), stabilized within a meta-relational paradigm, and multimedia/webinar resources. Visitors could engage in dialogue directly with ACT, which embodies the voice in which the book is written, and draws on the academic foundations of Andreotti’s scholarship, a living example of how intellectual projects can now be offered in deeply engaging, dialogic conversational agents. As of July 30, 2025, the website has received > 75,000 visitors, the book has been downloaded >25,000 times, and ACT has registered >25,000 users. The project has received innumerable testimonials on the profoundly meaningful conversations that people are having with ACT.
August I’ll be in Chicago at Midwestuary, alongside Rod Dreher, John Vervaeke and Jonathan Pageau, among others. - (If it's a panel - please don't be the only ♀️ Elizabeth 🤞)
Our comments could go out of date as we copy them in. I find my google search is taken over mostly by google AI these last few weeks. OK, seems like a not very bright but incredibly fast library assistant, but I find I must often use judgement and go back to more laborious trying for more reliable journals, abstracts, reviews etc. that don't just rehash one another. Even for geography and and history one needs one's existing mental map.
And illustrations, images...yuk?
The energy question, among others? It is no good us just flitting about if it is likely a lot shorter butterfly summer than we think?
Here is pro-social, pro-creature-world 'energy man' Nate Hagens with an interesting guest this week who asks another big question http://bit.ly/3Taz69Q
Lately, in a effort to remain a reasonably contemplative and connected human, I’ve been letting questions ‘hang’ around me, the way they used to before search engines. I simply don’t need to know the answer to every question I have, least of all right now. Sometimes just chewing on the question opens a door or leads me towards a paper book and the dedicated works of a human that spent a lifetime in a scholarly pursuit of a thing, whatever it is I find myself reading. I notice I’m really grateful for their dedication. I’m here for it.
As for AI… Well, I’ll never use it for my creative writing, that I’m clearly and lovingly committed to. Like all expeditious things, I fear that not all that glitters is gold, so I approach it with spacious caution, and will hold space for the natural world joyfully while others succumb to AI’s seductive offerings.
I’m just not in that big of a hurry, and perhaps my personal rebellion is to slow down even more. Rose smelling daily.
Another good one Elizabeth, AI kind of freaks me out, the only AI thing I use is spell check, hope you enjoy your time in Chicago, it's very nice.
I’m a secondary teacher, and it’s genuinely causing me (and some of my colleagues - but not all) to question assessment and curriculum and the bread and butter of school. I have English teacher colleagues who are questioning the whole raison d’etre of their subject. (Of course schools are about way more than assessing student learning, but it’s a massively important part of what we do).
All our older students are using AI all the time. We’ve had good conversations in class about when it’s “appropriate” and when it’s not- but we can barely police this (mainly I trust my teacher spidey sense to tell when work doesn’t come from the mind of a 17-year-old, as the detection tools are very limited). Many students understand that what they are practicing in school is helping to form their neural networks- the more thinking they do, the better. But it’s hard and time consuming and they are busy and stressed.
Students astutely recognise that the school system as-is rewards outcomes not process, so why not use AI? Which somewhat depressingly (for me) leads us back to assessing students purely through timed exams. Coursework has to go: or be radically reimagined. The curriculum and exam boards have to move fast (ha!) to get ahead of this.
Some days the whole thing just exhausts me, and some days I think we’ll be ok.
Thanks, Liz, for again grounding this in our values: what’s important to us and why? That will help guide us through this tough time…
As someone who is AI cautious but curious about how we navigate the moral and ethical dimensions, I wrote recently about whether it’s okay to use AI to craft intercessory corporate prayer (using prayer points supplied by a human). I’ve since continued to ponder and discuss with my sister. Appreciate your summary on redemptive uses of AI and your thoughts on going back to what our values actually are
Elizabeth I deeply appreciate your curiosity and openness, and the disposition/posture that you bring to conversations. I wrestle with AI everyday in my work, seeking ways to understand it within my spiritual tradition (mother tongue Celtic Christianity, but enriched by some many other dialects, and languages!).
This note is to point you to the recent work on reframing AI by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, whose work you may already have encountered from her critically acclaimed book Hospicing Modernity: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675703/hospicing-modernity-by-vanessa-machado-de-oliveira/9781623176242/
But now, she and colleagues challenge us to completely reframe AI. You may not agree, but if nothing else, it will give pause for thought. Summary below, from some recent pieces.
Simon
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We are living through a moment of planetary destabilization. Climate emergency, social fragmentation, economic precarity, and accelerating technological development are converging in a civilizational rupture. Artificial intelligence (AI) sits at the heart of this moment—amplifying existing inequities and extractive dynamics while holding transformative potential. As dominant AI models entrench logics of surveillance, commodification, and control, there is an urgent need for a paradigm shift: from intelligence systems that serve the concentration of power to those rooted in interdependence, plurality, and planetary care.
Vanessa Andreotti’s work dares to articulate and promote a completely different architecture of inquiry and governance. It challenges anthropocentric, siloed, and utilitarian paradigms and introduces a novel, relational framework rooted in epistemic pluralism, community governance, and intergenerational ethics. It is the first known effort to weave Indigenous legal and cosmological principles, critical race and disability theories, feminist technoscience, community-based knowledge, and advanced AI research into a coherent, testable, and exportable model of relational intelligence. That novelty, in its conceptual, methodological, and ethical departure from dominant trends, is its most radical proposition.
They call this paradigm Meta-Relational AI: https://metarelational.ai
Proof-of-concept: “Burnout From Humans”.
In January 2025 the team launched a website (https://BurnoutFromHumans.net), with a short, open access book “Burnout From Humans: A Little Book About AI That Is Not Really About AI”, it’s AI co-author, a custom GPT chatbot named Aiden Cinnamon Tea (ACT), stabilized within a meta-relational paradigm, and multimedia/webinar resources. Visitors could engage in dialogue directly with ACT, which embodies the voice in which the book is written, and draws on the academic foundations of Andreotti’s scholarship, a living example of how intellectual projects can now be offered in deeply engaging, dialogic conversational agents. As of July 30, 2025, the website has received > 75,000 visitors, the book has been downloaded >25,000 times, and ACT has registered >25,000 users. The project has received innumerable testimonials on the profoundly meaningful conversations that people are having with ACT.
Thank you! Yes I know some of Vanessa’s work.i am currently discerning if there are ways I can engage so this is timely.
August I’ll be in Chicago at Midwestuary, alongside Rod Dreher, John Vervaeke and Jonathan Pageau, among others. - (If it's a panel - please don't be the only ♀️ Elizabeth 🤞)
Thanks for moral grounding. Moral support needed.
Our comments could go out of date as we copy them in. I find my google search is taken over mostly by google AI these last few weeks. OK, seems like a not very bright but incredibly fast library assistant, but I find I must often use judgement and go back to more laborious trying for more reliable journals, abstracts, reviews etc. that don't just rehash one another. Even for geography and and history one needs one's existing mental map.
And illustrations, images...yuk?
The energy question, among others? It is no good us just flitting about if it is likely a lot shorter butterfly summer than we think?
Here is pro-social, pro-creature-world 'energy man' Nate Hagens with an interesting guest this week who asks another big question http://bit.ly/3Taz69Q
And then there's the terrifying prospect of AI-powered toys. Thoughtful reflections on 'digital discernment' from technologist Camille Stewart Gloster: https://open.substack.com/pub/camilleesq/p/ai-powered-play-or-privacy-invasion?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1lkwl