Dr. Anne Foerst is Professor of Theology and Computer Science
and Director of Nexus: The Science and Religion Dialogue Project
at St. Bonaventure University. Previously, she has worked as
research scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was also affiliated
with the Center for the Studies of Values in Public Life of
Harvard Divinity School. While in the artificial intelligence
lab at MIT, Foerst served as theological advisor for the Cog and
Kismet projects, two attempts to develop embodied, autonomous
social robots that resemble human infants in their ability to
learn and develop more mature intelligence levels.
Dr. Foerst initiated and directs "God and
Computers," a dialogue project initially between Harvard
Divinity School, the Boston Theological Institute, and MIT, and
now to be continued at St. Bonaventure. In this function, she
has organized several public lecture series and public
conferences on Artificial Intelligence, computer science and
concepts on personhood and dignity.
Dr. Foerst has published
papers in academic journals on the possibility for mutual
enrichment between Artificial Intelligence, the Cognitive
Sciences, and Jewish and Christian theologies and
anthropologies. She also writes for popular media to bring the
question on religion and science to a broader audience. Her
research centers mostly on questions of embodiment and social
interaction as central elements in human cognition, on questions
of personhood and dignity, and on how to bring theology back
into the public discourse in secularized, high-tech Western
cultures. Foerst is contributing editor for the quarterly
magazine Spirituality & Health and is the author of God In the Machine: What Robots Teach Us About Humanity and God.
Foerst holds degrees in computer science and
philosophy from the University of Bonn, Germany, a master of
divinity degree from the Seminary of the Protestant Church in Rhineland, and a Ph.D. in theology from the Ruhr-University at Bochum, Germany.
selected books
God In the Machine: What Robots Teach Us About Humanity and God
(Plume; Reprint edition, 2005)
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