Date: April 8, 2026
Time: 8:30-12:30 P.M.
Location: Coskrey Auditorium in Memorial Hall
Light refreshments will be provided.
Sponsored jointly by Mississippi State University and the Pontificia University Antonianum, “The New Poverty: Complexity, Ethics and Artificial Intelligence" considers artificial intelligence from an ethical perspective. The conference title evokes phrases from the document Antiqua et Nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence, published in 2025 by two departments of the Roman Curia. The document speaks from the intellectual context of the integral ecology perspective and contemplates the possibility that, along with great positive potential, “AI may present challenges to the common good just as differential material wealth affects access to political and social influence the document warns that AI could be used to perpetuate marginalization and discrimination create new forms of poverty widen the ‘digital divide’ and worsen existing social inequalities.” Further, the great complexity of current AI Demands increasingly large data sets, computational power, and storage that, in turn, relies on resources such as energy, land, and water. As an allocation of resources, this raises questions of sustainability. Conference speakers will engage ethical aspects of AI from a variety of perspectives responsive to the theme.