The Human Person and Biotechnology: Artificial Intelligence and its Limitations

Rick Stevens is the Associate Laboratory Director of the Computing, Environment and Life Sciences Directorate at Argonne National Laboratory, and a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, with significant responsibility in delivering on the U.S. national initiative for Exascale computing and developing the DOE initiative in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Science.

At Argonne, he is leading the Laboratory’s AI for Science initiative and currently focusing on high-performance computing systems which includes leading a significant collaboration with Intel and Cray to launch Argonne’s first exascale computer, Aurora 21, which will pursue some of the farthest-reaching science and engineering breakthroughs ever achieved with supercomputing, as well as a partnership with Cerebras Systems to bring hardware on site to advance the massive deep learning experiments being pursued at Argonne for basic and applied science and medicine with supercompute-scale AI.

Prof. Stevens is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has received many national honors for his research, including an R&D 100 award.

Matthew Elmore is the AI Ethics and Evaluation Specialist at Duke AI Health. Dr. Elmore supports operations focusing on the ethics, evaluation, and oversight of AI-driven clinical decision tools. He plays a major role in organizing work with the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), as well as conducting research, writing, training, and consulting. Dr. Elmore joined Duke AI Health after completing doctoral work in bioethics at Duke Divinity School, where his project focused on the Western conception of free will and the ethics of informed consent. His background is “two-legged,” with one foot planted in the liberal arts and the other in applied health sciences. Trained as an EMT, he began his career taking care of patients in the emergency department and burn unit of his hometown hospital in Michigan. He later worked in clinical research, partnering with a cardiologist to develop robotic innovations for heart procedures. While serving in those capacities, Dr. Elmore pursued studies in philosophy, theology, and literature, all of which set up his present frame of mind at the intersection of healthcare and the humanities.

Jeffrey P. Bishop is the Tenet Endowed Chair in Health Care Ethics, professor of philosophy and professor of theology at Saint Louis University. He holds an MD from the University of Texas and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Dallas. Bishop’s scholarly work is focused on the historical, political, and philosophical conditions that underpin contemporary medical and scientific practices and theories. He has written on diverse topics from transhumanism and enhancement technologies to clinical ethics consultation and medical humanities. Dr. Bishop is the author of The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and the Care of the Dying and is currently working on a second book with colleagues M. Therese Lysaught and Andrew Michel tentatively titled, Chasing After Virtue: Neuroscience, Economics, and the Biopolitics of Morality.

Stephen C. Meredith is Professor in the Departments of Pathology, Neurology, and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago, where he also teaches courses on literature, philosophy, and theology. He works on the biophysics of protein structure, concentrating on amyloid proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases. He also teaches courses in the College on James Joyce’s Ulysses, St. Thomas Aquinas, Augustine’s City of God, and other authors, particularly Dostoevsky and Thomas Mann. His main theological interest is in the problem of evil, and in this connection, he is currently completing a book on the philosophical and literary perspectives on disease, titled Disease and the Problem of Evil. His current interests also center on the impact of biotechnology and the genetic revolution on the definition of human nature.