3,060 research outputs found
What constitutes fruitful continuing ministry development for Baptist ministers in Scotland?
This thesis presents a series of discoveries about what has contributed to the continuing development of Baptist ministers in Scotland. Previous scholarship has focused on the initial training of ministers (eg Reber and Reber 2010, Goodliff 2017) and the impact of initial ministry education on ministerial practice in the early years (eg Scharen and Campbell-Reid 2016). Denominations have produced guidance for ministers on how to pursue continuing development (eg Archbishop’s Council 2010a, Church of Scotland 2017, Methodist Church 2018) which has been the focus of some evaluative studies (eg Hamill 2010, Wilkin 2014, Clinton, 2016, Denton and Thomas 2017). This research uses narrative inquiry to listen to the way practising ministers describe what has actually been developmental for them over the years and decades of their ministries. Key themes that emerge are the desire for practical wisdom, the importance of communal learning, the impact of development dialogues and the significance of habits. In the light of these discoveries I propose a new way of defining Continuing Ministry Development and make recommendations as to how these could be reflected in the practice of denominations and networks of churches
Affective artificial agents as sui generis affective artifacts
AI-based technologies are increasingly pervasive in a number of contexts. Our affective and emotional life makes no exception. In this article, we analyze one way in which AI based technologies can affect them. In particular, our investigation will focus on affective artificial agents, namely AI-powered software or robotic agents designed to interact with us in affectively salient ways. We build upon the existing literature on affective artifacts with the aim of providing an original analysis of affective artificial agents and their distinctive features. We argue that, unlike comparatively low-tech affective artifacts, affective artificial agents display a specific form of agency, which prevents them from being perceived by their users as extensions of their selves. In addition to this, we claim that their functioning crucially depends on the simulation of human-like emotion-driven behavior and requires a distinctive form of transparency – we call it emotional transparency – that might give rise to ethical and normative tensions
Multidisciplinary perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and the law
This open access book presents an interdisciplinary, multi-authored, edited collection of chapters on Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) and the Law. AI technology has come to play a central role in the modern data economy. Through a combination of increased computing power, the growing availability of data and the advancement of algorithms, AI has now become an umbrella term for some of the most transformational technological breakthroughs of this age. The importance of AI stems from both the opportunities that it offers and the challenges that it entails. While AI applications hold the promise of economic growth and efficiency gains, they also create significant risks and uncertainty. The potential and perils of AI have thus come to dominate modern discussions of technology and ethics – and although AI was initially allowed to largely develop without guidelines or rules, few would deny that the law is set to play a fundamental role in shaping the future of AI. As the debate over AI is far from over, the need for rigorous analysis has never been greater. This book thus brings together contributors from different fields and backgrounds to explore how the law might provide answers to some of the most pressing questions raised by AI. An outcome of the Católica Research Centre for the Future of Law and its interdisciplinary working group on Law and Artificial Intelligence, it includes contributions by leading scholars in the fields of technology, ethics and the law.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies
Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today and plays out as a cruel engine of myriad forms of injustice, violence and destruction. The effects of climate change from human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are devastating and accelerating; yet are uncertain and uneven both in terms of geography and socio-economic impacts. Emerging from the dynamics of capitalism since the industrial revolution — as well as industrialisation under state-led socialism — the consequences of climate change are especially profound for the countryside and its inhabitants. The book interrogates the narratives and strategies that frame climate change and examines the institutionalised responses in agrarian settings, highlighting what exclusions and inclusions result. It explores how different people — in relation to class and other co-constituted axes of social difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation — are affected by climate change, as well as the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas. The book in turn explores how climate change – and the responses to it - affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics. Finally, the book examines what strategies are required to confront climate change, and the underlying political-economic dynamics that cause it, reflecting on what this means for agrarian struggles across the world. The 26 chapters in this volume explore how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change. Through a huge variety of case studies alongside more conceptual chapters, the book makes the often-missing connection between climate change and critical agrarian studies. The book argues that making the connection between climate and agrarian justice is crucial
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Democratic Fault Lines Then and Now: An Exploration of Longstanding and Emerging Threats to the Fulfillment of Democratic Expectations by the American Mass Public
Democratic theorists delineate several requirements for mass publics in democratic societies. These include holding policy preferences, deliberating over competing viewpoints, and making informed choices. This dissertation contributes to debates about the public’s performance in each of these areas.
In the first chapter, I argue that a statistical method that has been used to characterize the public’s ideological consistency has produced misleading results. In the second, I demonstrate that two aspects of Americans’ social networks differ in their relationships to important political attitudes necessary for productive deliberation. In the third, I show that Americans with politically diverse social networks trust more of the content they encounter on social media but are no more likely to discern truth from falsehood or respond to accuracy nudging interventions. In total, this dissertation employs analytical, observational, and experimental research methods to address questions that concern old and new threats to mass democratic behavior in the United States
Protecting Privacy in Indian Schools: Regulating AI-based Technologies' Design, Development and Deployment
Education is one of the priority areas for the Indian government, where Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are touted to bring digital transformation. Several Indian states have also started deploying facial recognition-enabled CCTV cameras, emotion recognition technologies, fingerprint scanners, and Radio frequency identification tags in their schools to provide personalised recommendations, ensure student security, and predict the drop-out rate of students but also provide 360-degree information of a student. Further, Integrating Aadhaar (digital identity card that works on biometric data) across AI technologies and learning and management systems (LMS) renders schools a ‘panopticon’.
Certain technologies or systems like Aadhaar, CCTV cameras, GPS Systems, RFID tags, and learning management systems are used primarily for continuous data collection, storage, and retention purposes. Though they cannot be termed AI technologies per se, they are fundamental for designing and developing AI systems like facial, fingerprint, and emotion recognition technologies. The large amount of student data collected speedily through the former technologies is used to create an algorithm for the latter-stated AI systems. Once algorithms are processed using machine learning (ML) techniques, they learn correlations between multiple datasets predicting each student’s identity, decisions, grades, learning growth, tendency to drop out, and other behavioural characteristics. Such autonomous and repetitive collection, processing, storage, and retention of student data without effective data protection legislation endangers student privacy.
The algorithmic predictions by AI technologies are an avatar of the data fed into the system. An AI technology is as good as the person collecting the data, processing it for a relevant and valuable output, and regularly evaluating the inputs going inside an AI model. An AI model can produce inaccurate predictions if the person overlooks any relevant data. However, the state, school administrations and parents’ belief in AI technologies as a panacea to student security and educational development overlooks the context in which ‘data practices’ are conducted. A right to privacy in an AI age is inextricably connected to data practices where data gets ‘cooked’. Thus, data protection legislation operating without understanding and regulating such data practices will remain ineffective in safeguarding privacy.
The thesis undergoes interdisciplinary research that enables a better understanding of the interplay of data practices of AI technologies with social practices of an Indian school, which the present Indian data protection legislation overlooks, endangering students’ privacy from designing and developing to deploying stages of an AI model. The thesis recommends the Indian legislature frame better legislation equipped for the AI/ML age and the Indian judiciary on evaluating the legality and reasonability of designing, developing, and deploying such technologies in schools
Design Knowledge for Virtual Learning Companions from a Value-centered Perspective
The increasing popularity of conversational agents such as ChatGPT has sparked interest in their potential use in educational contexts but undermines the role of companionship in learning with these tools. Our study targets the design of virtual learning companions (VLCs), focusing on bonding relationships for collaborative learning while facilitating students’ time management and motivation. We draw upon design science research (DSR) to derive prescriptive design knowledge for VLCs as the core of our contribution. Through three DSR cycles, we conducted interviews with working students and experts, held interdisciplinary workshops with the target group, designed and evaluated two conceptual prototypes, and fully coded a VLC instantiation, which we tested with students in class. Our approach has yielded 9 design principles, 28 meta-requirements, and 33 design features centered around the value-in-interaction. These encompass Human-likeness and Dialogue Management, Proactive and Reactive Behavior, and Relationship Building on the Relationship Layer (DP1,3,4), Adaptation (DP2) on the Matching Layer, as well as Provision of Supportive Content, Fostering Learning Competencies, Motivational Environment, and Ethical Responsibility (DP5-8) on the Service Layer
CODED SOCIAL CONTROL: CHINA’S NORMALIZATION OF BIOMETRIC SURVEILLANCE IN THE POST COVID-19 ERA
This article investigates the longevity of health QR codes, a digital instrument of pandemic surveillance, in post-COVID China. From 2020 to 2022, China widely used this tri-color tool to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. A commonly held assumption is that health QR codes have become obsolete in post-pandemic China. This study challenges such an assumption. It reveals their persistence and integration - through mobile apps and online platforms - beyond the COVID-19 public health emergency. A prolonged, expanded and normalized use of tools which were originally intended for contact tracing and pandemic surveillance raises critical legal and ethical concerns. Moreover, their functional transformation from epidemiological risk assessment tools to instruments of behavior modification and social governance heralds the emergence of a Data Leviathan. This transformation is underpinned by a duality of underlying political and commercial forces. These include 1) a structural enabler: a powerful alliance between political authorities and tech giants and 2) an ideological legitimizer: a commitment to collective security over individual autonomy. In contrast to the rights-centric approach embraced by Western democracies to regulate AI-driven biometric surveillance, China adopts a state-industry dominance model of governance
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