Times and Events are subject to change
VAI Seoul Schedule (Korea Standard Time; GMT+9)
VAI Seoul Schedule (Pacific Daylight Time; GMT-7)
We tried to build the schedule around the core questions, with each day focusing on one of the questions. The First day of the Seoul Conference is predominately about AI and society, and rethinking related concepts. The Second day of the Seoul Conference is about examining what we might mean by AI having virtue. And the Third day of the Seoul Conference is focused on whether AI can be religious or virtuous.
We've tried our best to fit things together but recognize it might not be an exact match at all times.
Day 1 (July 11, 8 am KST; July 10, 4 pm PDT)
Susan Kennedy (8:15 AM – 8:45 AM KST; 4:15 PM – 4:45 PM PDT)
Susan Kennedy is currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University, prior to which she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University where she worked with the Embedded EthiCS team to integrate ethical reasoning into the computer science curriculum. Her research focuses on the ethical, social and political impacts of emerging technologies, ranging from artificial wombs to artificial intelligence.
Soraj Hongladarom (8:45 AM - 9:15 AM KST; 4:45 PM - 5:15 PM PDT)
Soraj Hongladarom is Research Fellow at the Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. His concern is mainly on how science and technology can be integrated into the life-world of the people in the so-called Third World countries, and what kind of ethical considerations can be obtained from such relation. A large part of this question concerns how information technology is integrated into the lifeworld of the Thai people, and primarily how such integration is expressed in the use of information technology in education. He is the author of The Ethics of AI and Robotics: A Buddhist Viewpoint (Lexington), among others.
JungHyung Kim (10:00 AM - 10:30 AM KST; 6:00 PM - 6:30 PM PDT)
Junghyung Kim completed his Ph.D. program at the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, USA, under the supervision of Ted Peters. His dissertation was entitled “Cosmic Hope in a Scientific Age.” He earned the joint first prize in the 2010 ISSR essay competition in honor of John Polkinghorne. He is currently an associate professor of philosophy of religion at Yonsei University, South Korea. He is working on a project to reconstruct the philosophy of religion and theology for an age of science and technology, while seeking to address perennial questions in theology and the philosophy of religion in dialogue with other disciplines, such as phenomenology, neuroscience, emerging technologies, earth science, and astrobiology.
Levi Checketts (10:30 AM - 11:00 AM KST; 6:30 PM - 7:00 PM PDT)
Dr. Levi Checketts is assistant professor of religion and philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University and associate director for the Centre for Applied Ethics. He currently leads an Asian-based discussion on social and ethical issues in AI for the Dicastery for Culture and Education and recently organized an international conference in Hong Kong on ethical issues in AI. He has published in Theology and Science, Religions, The Journal of Moral Theology and Techne among other places, and has a forthcoming book entitled Poor Technology.
Day 2 (July 12, 8 am KST; July 11, 4 pm PDT)
Chang In Sohn (8:00 AM – 8:30 AM KST; 4:00 PM – 4:30 PM PDT)
Chang In Sohn (Chang In or Chan) is entering the third year of his doctoral program at the Graduate Theological Union, concentrating on Theology and Science. Since his bachelor's degree with a double major in religious studies and psychology/neuroscience, Chang In’s primary research has been multidisciplinary studies between theological anthropology, virtue ethics, moral psychology, and neuroscience of morality. Along with his studies at the Graduate Theological Union and as an office assistant at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS), he also works as a research technician at the Tsao lab at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute/UC Berkeley to further research the topic of neuro-epistemology/ontology in relation to the embodied cognition, visual representation, and consciousness. He plans to pursue a second doctoral degree in neuroscience to bridge the gap between theology/philosophy and neuroscience.
Somparn Promta (8:30 AM - 9:00 AM KST; 4:30 PM - 5:00 PM PDT)
Somparn Promta is a professor of philosophy. He gets Ph.D. in philosophy from Chulalongkorn University. After completing his Ph. D. in 1991, he had taught at the philosophy department, Chulalongkorn University during 1991-2016. After his retirement from Chulalongkorn 2016, he has joined Mahachulalongkorn University, as the director of the Center for the Study of Buddhist Philosophy from 2016 - until the present. Somparn has written some books. Most of his books can be found on Amazon.com. His latest books include Buddhism and God: Does the Buddha Reject God.
Rachel Siow Robertson (9:00 AM - 9:30 KST; 5:00 PM - 5:30 PM PDT)
I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University. I studied my BA (Hons), MPhil, and PhD at the University of Cambridge before working as Director of Studies in Philosophy at St Catharine's College, and as a Research Associate at The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. My research and teaching interests are broadly in philosophical anthropology. For my PhD, I offered a new reading of Immanuel Kant's Critical work, demonstrating the importance of human embodiment for his philosophical system. My current interest is in how making and using technology impacts our characters. My approach is centred around joy, exploring how technology can support us as whole persons in community, rejoicing and flourishing together.
Wha-Chul Son (10:15 AM - 10:45 AM KST; 6:15 PM - 6:45 PM PDT)
Wha-Chul Son is a professor at Handong Global University in Pohang, Korea, teaching philosophy. He earned a BA from Seoul National University, Korea, and his MA and Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. His main research area is the philosophy of technology dealing with topics such as technology and democracy, classical philosophy of technology, technology and media, engineering ethics, philosophy of AI, and posthumanism. He authored The Future of Homo Faber (in Korean 2020), Langdon Winner (in Korean 2016), and The Light and Shadow of Modern Technology: Toffler and Ellul (in Korean 2006), and co-authored a dozen books on the philosophy of technology. He also translated Langdon Winner's The Whale and the Reactor and Neil Postman’s Conscientious Objections into Korean.
Chenyang Li (10:45 AM - 11:15 AM KST; 6:45 PM - 7:15 PM PDT)
Chenyang Li is a Professor of Philosophy at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he founded the philosophy program. His primary areas of research are Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy. He is the author of The Tao Encounters the West: Explorations in Comparative Philosophy, The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony, Reshaping Confucianism: A Progressive Inquiry and over 100 journal articles and book chapters. His edited/co-edited volumes include The Sage and the Second Sex, The East Asian Challenge for Democracy, Moral Cultivation and Confucian Character, Chinese Metaphysics and its Problems, Harmony in Chinese Thought, The Virtue of Harmony. He was President of the Association of Chinese Philosophers in North America (ACPA), President of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy (ISCP), and an inaugural Berggruen Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford University.
Day 3 (July 13, 8 am KST; July 12, 4 pm PDT)
Wook Joo Park (8:00 AM – 8:30 AM KST; 4:00 PM – 4:30 PM PDT)
Dr. Wook Joo Park majored in systematic theology and philosophy of religion and holds a Ph.D. in Theology from Yonsei University in South Korea. His research interests primarily lie in phenomenological understanding and hermeneutic interpretation of existential experiences that stimulate a human being's fundamental religiosity. Dr. Park has applied this religious-phenomenological approach to the critique of the latest trends in artificial intelligence technology to explore a proper direction for human-friendly human-AI interaction. Currently, he is conducting lectures on the philosophy of religion and AI humanities as a research professor at the United Graduate School of Theology at Yonsei University.
Daekyung Jung (8:30 AM - 9:00 AM KST; 4:30 PM - 5:00 PM PDT)
Daekyung (D.K.) Jung completed his Bachelor of Theology at the Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary in Korea, and his Master of Divinity at the San Francisco Theological Seminary. He then earned his doctoral degree in Systematic and Philosophical Theology from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, U.S.A. His research interests extend to trans-posthumanism and religious experience from the perspectives of religion and science. His notable publications include "Transhumanism and the Theology of Xiang" (Theology and Science, 2019), "Re-Enchanting the Human in an Era of Naturalism" (The Expository Times, 2020), and "Transhumanism and Theological Anthropology" (Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, 2022). Currently serving as an Assistant Professor at Soongsil University in Korea, he teaches courses such as “Religion and Science,” “Human Civilizations and Christianity,” and “Korean Theology.”
Yong Sup Song (9:45 AM - 10:15 AM KST; 5:45 PM - 6:15 PM PDT)
Yong Sup Song is an Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics and Theology at Youngnam Theological Univ.& Sem., South Korea. His research interests are focused on the ethical issues of Artificial Intelligence. As a Korean Christian ethicist, he emphasizes the inclusion of regional values and the preferential option for the poor and the marginalized in the development of AI. He is currently working on discovering and introducing cultural values in Korean society as regional values for moral AI. He has conducted three research projects for the National Research Foundation of Korea on Artificial Intelligence and is a winner of 2022-2023 Collaborative International Research Grants (with Prof. Robert M. Geraci, PI) by AAR.
Heup Young Kim (10:15 AM - 10:45 AM KST; 6:15 PM - 6:45 PM PDT)
Heup Young Kim is a Korean theologian and scholar of East Asian religions, specializing in constructive theology, inter-religious dialogue, and religion-science dialogue, with extensive publications in Korean and English, including A Theology of Dao (Theo-dao) and Wang Yang-ming and Karl Barth: A Confucian-Chrsitian Dialogue. He is the director of the Korea Forum for Science and Life, a fellow of the International Society of Science and Religion, and an advisor to the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. He was a professor of Theology at Kangnam University, Korea, a president of the Korean Society of Systematic Theology, and a co-moderator of the Congress of Asian Theologians.