TaLAI symposium: GenAI in Higher Education

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• Opening keynote by Anco Peeters (Radboud University) – Meaningful Frictions and AI-Mediated Education
  The proliferation of GenAI in schools stands in a long tradition of digitalising educational practices. Many of the companies delivering GenAI implementations aim to make such practices more efficient through a smoother and faster exchange of information. Yet, learning processes are often served by precisely the frictions that GenAI companies aim to remove. In his talk, Anco Peeters will map types of GenAI-mediated educational tools and, based on pedagogical literature, argue why some frictions in education are meaningful frictions. Meaningful frictions may be thought of as lying along sensorimotor, interpersonal, epistemic, and moral dimensions and ought not to be smoothed away by GenAI tools.
           Anco Peeters (Radboud University) applies his expertise in virtue ethics, embodied cognition and AI to answer the question: “How do we flourish in relation to artificial intelligence?” Within the context of AI in education, he is especially interested in how AI enables or hinders learning processes that support self-actualisation, or becoming the person you want to be. He obtained degrees in both Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence and has over 15 years of experience in bridging both.
• Presentation of TaLAI project results
• Presentation of UvA AI Chat
• Presentation of BKO+ track Responsible AI in Education at UvA
• Presentation of FAIR-ASSESS project by Leiden University
• Closing keynote by Marius Dorobantu (VU Amsterdam) – Intelligent Speakers in a Linguistic Universe: Thinking Theologically about Generative AI
  An exploration – at the interface between theology and science – of what the current GenAI revolution might reveal about some of our biggest questions: The nature of reality, the relation between language and intelligence, the difference between human and machine speech, and the more subtle ethical implications of automating language production.
           Dr. Marius Dorobantu is an Assistant Professor of Theology and Artificial Intelligence at VU Amsterdam, a fellow of the International Society for Science & Religion, and the lead-editor of the Routledge volume, Perspectives on Spiritual Intelligence (2024). His first monograph – Artificial Intelligence and the Image of God: Are We More than Intelligent Machines? – is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. His 2025 TEDx Talk explores from a theological angle why GenAI works better than it should.

The symposium will start at 13:00 and finish around 16:30, after which there will be drinks and networking opportunities.