Being Human in the Age of AI:

Reality, Intelligence, Agency, and the Common Good

August 16 – September 17, 2027

Thematic Description

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer merely a collection of specialized technologies. It is becoming a pervasive environment within which human beings perceive reality, produce knowledge, exercise judgment, organize institutions, and understand themselves. Its rapid development therefore raises questions that are not only technical or ethical, but also metaphysical, anthropological, epistemological, political, and spiritual.

At stake is more than what machines can do. AI compels us to reconsider what it means to understand, to act, to create, to bear responsibility, and ultimately to be human. When computational systems generate language and images, recommend decisions, imitate conversation, and participate in the production of knowledge, they appear to blur distinctions between intelligence and calculation, agency and automation, originality and recombination, and reality and representation. Yet the appearance of intelligent machine behavior does not by itself resolve whether such systems possess understanding, intentionality, consciousness, freedom, or moral responsibility.

The 2027 RVP Seminar attempts to examine the meaning of intelligence itself and to delve into such questions as: Is intelligence primarily the capacity to solve problems and produce successful outputs, or does it also require embodiment, experience, relationality, self-awareness, moral discernment, and openness to truth? Can intelligence be separated from the living person and reconstructed instrumentally and mechanically? Or does the language of “artificial intelligence” risk reducing human intelligence to those functions that machines can simulate?

These questions acquire particular urgency in light of Antiqua et nova (Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence, 2025) and Magnifica Humanitas (On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, 2026), as well as a growing body of philosophical, ethical, and theological literature that raises similar concerns. Both documents resist the simple equivalence of artificial and human intelligence, emphasizing instead the dependence of AI upon human intelligence and the need to evaluate technological systems in relation to human dignity, responsibility, solidarity, subsidiarity, and the common good. The seminar will place these interventions in conversation with philosophy, the human sciences, global ethical frameworks, and diverse cultural and religious traditions rather than treating any single intellectual framework as exhaustive.

One of the crucial issues posed by AI concerns the nature of agency. Autonomous systems may operate without immediate human intervention, but operational autonomy must not be equated with freedom or moral agency. The question is not only whether a machine can act, but who remains answerable for the socio-technical arrangements through which its actions become consequential. Responsibility may be distributed among designers, corporations, governments, institutions, and users, but it must not be allowed to disappear behind the apparent agency of the machine.

AI also raises fundamental questions about our relationship to reality and truth. Machine-learning systems do not encounter the world as human beings do; rather, they construct computational representations from data selected, classified, and interpreted within particular social and cultural contexts. Such systems can disclose patterns that might remain difficult to perceive, but they can also reproduce inherited prejudices, marginalize forms of knowledge that resist quantification, and shape the realities upon which individuals and institutions act.

For this reason, the philosophy of AI cannot be separated from questions of power. Every technological system embodies decisions about what should be measured, optimized, predicted, or ignored. Magnifica Humanitas accordingly warns against treating technology as neutral and asks whether technological development helps persons and peoples become more humane, fraternal, and responsible toward future generations and the natural world. An adequate philosophy of AI must therefore consider not only algorithms but also the economic interests, material infrastructures, environmental costs, labor relations, and structures of authority through which AI is developed and deployed.

Concern of the upcoming RVP-Seminar is therefore neither the celebration nor the rejection of artificial intelligence, but the recovery of philosophical judgment: the capacity to discern which forms of technological development enlarge human freedom and understanding, which diminish them, and what kind of future we are collectively bringing into being. Indeed, the seminar seeks to bring the philosophical wisdom of diverse peoples and traditions to bear upon contemporary challenges. It invites scholars from around the world who share these concerns to make contributions drawing upon resources from different cultural heritages, philosophical traditions, and religious perspectives in order to cultivate a genuinely international conversation about intelligence, agency, responsibility, and social life in the age of AI.

Ultimately, the purpose of the seminar is not simply to decide whether machines are becoming more human, but to ask a more fundamental question: Are human beings and their communities becoming more mechanical—and how might technological development instead be directed toward the cultivation of freedom, wisdom, justice, solidarity, and a genuinely shared world? Hence, the guiding question for the entire seminar shall be:

The following are several specific concrete questions for further consideration and elaboration:

• What distinguishes computation from thought, information from meaning, and successful performance from genuine understanding?
• Can consciousness or intentionality emerge from computational processes, and what would count as evidence of such emergence?
• How should we distinguish functional autonomy, causal agency, epistemic participation, and moral responsibility?
• Is AI best understood as an instrument, an artifact, a medium, a socio-technical assemblage, or a new kind of entity?
• How do embodiment, affectivity, vulnerability, memory, relationship, and mortality contribute to human intelligence?
• Does AI disclose reality, represent it, or increasingly participate in constructing the realities within which people act?
• How do algorithms reshape truth, authority, education, work, creativity, and democratic judgment?
• Which conceptions of the human person are encoded in contemporary AI systems and in the economic models supporting them?
• How can human agency be preserved and cultivated rather than progressively delegated or weakened?
• What can different philosophical, cultural, and religious traditions contribute to a more adequate understanding of intelligence and responsibility?
• How should principles such as dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity, epistemic justice, sustainability, and the common good guide AI development?
• Does the age of AI require new metaphysical categories, or a renewed understanding of categories that philosophy already possesses?

Methodology

The 2027 annual seminar will proceed with the following characteristics:

1. A group of 15 to 20 scholars from different countries around the world will be selected to take part in the seminar. The format will be hybrid since a few participants will be selected to come to Washington, DC while those unable to come will join remotely from where they are for the duration of the seminar.
2. As an interdisciplinary and intercultural initiative, the seminar shall draw not only upon contemporary capabilities of various realms of humanities and social sciences but also from the richness of cultural traditions represented by seminar participants.
3. The duration of the seminar will be 5 weeks (August 23 to September 24, 2027). Participants will be asked to take part in all seminar sessions during the entire five weeks in order to develop a well-integrated community of research. Great importance will be given to the practice of mutual understanding and community-formation in order to achieve lasting forms of academic friendship and cooperation.
4. Seminar participants will be asked to present their well-developed papers in a time frame to be decided during the seminar. Papers should focus in a rigorous and innovative manner on the theme of the seminar. The final version of the paper should reflect the readings and discussions to be held during the seminar in order to be considered for publication.