Symposium 2026: “Unmasking the Machines”
Symposium 2026
The Starr King Symposium is an ongoing experiment in offering multi-locational, hybrid education, structuring a program that supports the full participation of persons who may gather either in person or online. The program will feature a variety of contributing presenters and panelists, as well as community forums for reflection and discerning shared insights. You may participate in Symposium through Zoom or by staying on site at the Jesuit Retreat Center of Los Altos, California.
Unmasking the Machines: Sustaining Spiritual Community in the Technocracy
Current social discourse portrays experimental “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) technologies as inevitable tools of progress that will radically transform how we live, work, play – and even pray. Such narratives have been driven by wealthy techno-authoritarians whose increasing opposition to democratic governance is framed by quasi-messianic beliefs in acceleration, or the rapid restructuring of civilization under the guidance of a paternalistic elite. This narrative is contested, meanwhile, by multiple critiques of AI as an overhyped set of software tools that generate negative social, political, environmental, and cognitive impacts.
During the 2026 Starr King Symposium, our task will be to ask deeper questions beyond a binary of technological revolution and revulsion. We will engage critical and constructive responses to the emerging technocracy—not simply in the realm of ideas, but in practice. Examining the nuanced ways in which these technologies can be both harmful and beneficial to living and leading in an era of accelerating transformation supports our understanding of the complexity and context of this moment. Learning from expert practitioners at the intersections of technology, ecology, social justice, and religious thought will inform our collective deliberation in search of shared wisdom and ethics. Together, we are invited to explore what it means to conscientiously create just and sustainable community in a time of rapid techno-social change.
Key questions for our deliberations include:
- What are the contexts, ideological assumptions, and positionalities that have driven technological development in our time, especially with the acceleration of “AI”? How do these visions relate to reality (or not)?
- What are the actual capabilities and impacts of AI? What visions of humanity’s future embolden its wealthiest proponents?
- What just, equitable, and sustainable future is possible with the technologies being developed and innovated today? What are the alternative visions of human flourishing/community that would animate these efforts?
The Jesuit Retreat Center of Los Altos
The host site for in-person engagement with the 2026 Symposium is the Jesuit Retreat Center of Los Altos, located on the San Francisco Peninsula. The Center occupies a 38-acre hillside campus featuring scenic views, a peaceful courtyard, walking trails, and a meditative outdoor labyrinth.
Attendees will stay in private bedrooms, each including a twin bed, writing table, and personal bathroom. The facility is air conditioned. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be served in JRC’s dining room and coffee/tea service is available throughout the day.
JRC is located approximately 19 miles from San Jose International Airport and 32 miles from San Francisco International Airport. Public transit (Caltrain and Valley Transit Authority buses) can deliver travelers to about one-half mile from the campus, but it is most easily accessed by personal vehicle or rideshare service. Free onsite parking is available.
Registration
Symposium participants will have three options for program attendance:
- Online via Zoom | Cost: $25
- Full In-Person Program at the Jesuit Retreat Center of Los Altos, CA. Fees cover lodging and meals Monday afternoon-Wednesday lunch | Cost: $375.
- Day-Use at JRC (Tuesday Only). Receive the Zoom link for Monday and Wednesday sessions and commute to JRC for Tuesday sessions. Fees cover attendance during the day, lunch, and optional dinner | Cost: $105 (lunch only) or $130 (lunch and dinner).
Registration is now open. In-person registration must be made by July 27. Online registration may be completed by August 28.
Student Registration
Registration for summer and fall courses is open now – students can register in Populi for the Symposium session that reflects their attendance plans (Online or California).
For students who are attending in person at JRC, the cost of room and board will be 50% subsidized by Starr King. Physical attendees must register in Populi by July 27 and will be billed $175 for their stay at the retreat center.
Draft Schedule
3:30 pm PT/6:30 pm ET – Community In-Gathering: I, Non-Robot
4:30 pm PT/7:30 pm ET – Unmasking the Machines: Understanding Hype and Ideology
6:00 pm PT – Dinner (JRC)
8:00 am PT – Breakfast (JRC)
9:00 am PT/12:00 pm ET – Community Conversation: AI and Theological Education
10:30 am PT/1:30 pm ET – Right Relations in the Technocene
12:00 pm PT – Lunch (JRC)
1:30 pm PT/4:30 pm ET – (Trans)Human Spirituality and the World We Envision
4:30 pm PT/7:30 pm ET – Community Conversation: The Telos of the Technocracy
6:00 pm PT – Dinner (JRC)
8:00 am PT – Breakfast (JRC)
9:00 am PT/12:00 pm ET – Community Conversation: Talking Back to the Hype
11:00 am PT/2:00 pm ET – Nourishing Our Spirits
12:00 pm PT – Lunch (JRC)
1:00 pm PT – Check-Out (JRC)
Monday, August 25
3:00 pm PT/6:00 pm ET - In-Gathering Worship
4:00 pm PT/7:00 pm ET – When No Thing Works
5:30 pm PT – Dinner (Mercy Center)
Tuesday, August 26
7:30 am PT – Breakfast (Mercy Center)
9:00 am PT/12:00 pm ET – Preparing for Polycrisis
10:00 am PT/1:00 pm ET – Practicing Mutual Aid
11:00 am PT/2:00 pm ET – Praxis Circle: Fostering Resilient Religious Communities
12:00 pm PT – Lunch (Mercy Center)
1:30 pm PT/4:30 pm ET – Praxis Circle: Chaplaincy in Disruptive Times
3:00 pm PT/6:00 pm ET – What Webs Require: Conflict Engagement Beyond Purity and Punishment
4:30 pm PT/7:30 pm ET – Praxis Circle: Organizing Towards Transformation
5:30 pm PT – Dinner (Mercy Center)
Wednesday, August 27
7:30 am PT – Breakfast (Mercy Center)
9:00 am PT/12:00 pm ET – Small Group Dialogues
10:00 am PT/1:00 pm ET – Reflecting in the Spirit
11:30 am PT/2:30 pm PT – Closing Ritual
12:00 pm PT – Lunch (Mercy Center)
1:00 pm PT – Check-Out (Mercy Center)
Program Sessions
Unmasking the Machines: Understanding Hype and Ideology
Adam Becker
What are we talking about when we talk about AI? What are its capabilities and implications? What visions of humanity’s future drive its wealthiest proponents? This session will set the stage for our communal reflections by providing an up-to-date understanding of technological innovations grouped under the banner of AI, outlining real or potential benefits and harms to individuals, society, and ecosystems, and interpreting the ideological underpinnings of key boosters.
Resources
Gebru and Torres, “The TESCREAL Bundle”
Becker, More Everything Forever (podcast episode)
Bell, Decolonizing AI (Tedx Talk)
Doctorow, “How to Burst the AI Bubble”
Right Relations in the Technocene
Noreen Herzfeld, Kate Ott, and Alex Sarkissian
New technology is never simply a “neutral” development but invites attentive ethical reflection on how it may reshape our relationships with other human beings and the fullness of the living world. In this session, we will more closely examine some of the myriad ways in which AI effects the web of interdependency, such as personal intimacy, labor and economic justice, ecological sustainability, and otherwise. How might a clear-eyed recognition of these interweaving impacts define our response?
Resources
Herzfeld, “Call Me Bigfoot: The Environmental Footprint of AI”
Ott, “Artificial Intelligence is Here. Now What?”
Ott, AI Companions and Relational Trauma (video)
AI as Karmic Accelerator
Hershock, Karmic Improvisation
(Trans)Human Spirituality and the World We Envision
Philip Butler, Nese Devenot, and Daniel Wildcat
The possibilities and challenges of the accelerating technosphere raise profound existential questions and not just pragmatic ones. Any judgments we make from embrace to resistance are rooted in more basic conceptions of existence, identity, and meaning. What is the human, and is it on its way to becoming transhuman? What is the nature of the cosmos in which we are embedded? What do we imagine as the path before us? This session will invite us to name theological and spiritual visions that may nurture, inspire, and instigate amidst the advancing technocracy.
Resources
Butler, Black Transhuman Liberation Theology
Devenot, “TESCREAL Hallucinations”
Wildcat, “Right Relations: Finding Deep Relationality in an Age of Artificial Intelligence”
Wildcat and Schneider, “The Geography of Nowhere in the Anthropocene Technosphere”
Community Conversations
During a series of community conversations from the beginning through to the end of Symposium, we will invite our participants to engage in reflective dialogue pertaining to the key questions named above. We will name opening assumptions and concerns, identify the uses (or misuses) of AI tools in theological education, discuss what we have learned from the presenters, and discern paths forward for Starr King, for our local communities, and for a just and equitable society.
Resources
Amnesty International, “Unlawful by Design”
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas
Presenters
Adam Becker
Adam Becker is a science journalist with a PhD in astrophysics. He is also the author of the acclaimed What Is Real? and More, Everything, Forever. In addition to his books, he has written for The New York Times, the BBC, NPR, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Quanta, Fortune, and many other publications. He hosts the weekly podcast Dreaming Against the Machine, which envisions better, realistic, and equitable futures. He lives in California.
Philip Butler
Philip Butler is an international scholar whose work primarily focuses on the intersections of neuroscience, technology, spirituality and Blackness. He uses the wisdom of these spaces to engage in critical and constructive analysis on Black posthumanism, artificial intelligence and pluriversal future realities. He is also the Director of Iliff’s AI Institute and founder of the Seekr Project, which explores the iterative connections between generative AI, mental health and critical Black consciousness.
Nese Devenot
Neşe Devenot, PhD (they/them) is a Senior Lecturer in the University Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University, where they conduct interdisciplinary research across the fields of medical humanities, psychedelic studies, bioethics, harm reduction, poetics, and comparative literature. They are a board member at Psymposia, a psychedelic harm reduction nonprofit, and they were previously an affiliated researcher with the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR) at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. A psychedelic humanities researcher since 2010, Devenot helped establish Psychedelic Studies as an interdisciplinary field by articulating the necessity of humanities frameworks for understanding psychedelic experiences. Since then, they have developed critiques of pseudoscientific justifications for therapeutic touch in psychedelic-assisted therapy and of corporate capture in the psychedelic industry. They were first author and lead architect of a book-length investigative report, “The Psychedelic Syndicate: How Silicon Valley Used Veterans to Hijack the Psychedelic Industry.” Their ongoing book project, Chemical Poetics: The Literary History of Psychedelic Science, examines the function of narrative and literary devices in structuring psychedelic experiences. Each chapter explores a different literary strategy for altering the “conditions of possibility” for reality in the present — the poetic techniques by which psychedelic authors have sought to change minds and worlds.
Noreen Herzfeld
Noreen Herzfeld is Director of Benedictine Spirituality and the Environment at St. John’s School of Theology and Seminary, Reuter Professor of Science and Religion emeritus, and a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies in Koper, Slovenia. She holds degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from The Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in Theology from The Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. Her books on AI include The Artifice of Intelligence: Divine and Human Relationship in a Robotic Age and In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit. She is also a co-writer and editor of Religion and the New Technologies and Religious and Cultural Implications of Technology-Mediated Relationships in a Post-Pandemic World. As a member of the AI Research Group of the Vatican Dicastery of Culture and Education, she is also a co-writer and co-editor of Encountering AI: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations.
Kate Ott
Kate Ott, PhD, is a feminist, religious ethicist addressing the formation of moral communities with specializations in technology, youth and young adults, sexuality, pedagogy and professional ethics. She is author of Sex, Tech, and Faith: Ethics for a Digital Age and the second edition of her book Christian Ethics for a Digital Society will be released next year. She lectures and leads workshops across North America on technology and sexuality issues. Dr. Ott is appointed as the Jerre and Mary Joy Stead Professor of Christian Social Ethics and director of the Stead Center for Ethics and Values at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL. For more on her writings, lectures, and courses, visit kateott.org.
Alex Sarkissian
Alex Sarkissian is a Buddhist chaplain, meditation teacher, and co-founder of the Buddhism & AI Initiative, which works to advance Buddhist engagement with the development and impacts of AI. He holds a Master of Divinity in Buddhism from Columbia University’s Union Theological Seminary, where his thesis examined the social and spiritual implications of AI and emerging technologies. Alex was previously a founder, CMO, and operator at various early-stage startups and a strategy and innovation consultant at Deloitte. His work today focuses on how Buddhist ethics and contemplative practice can serve as a pathway to individual and collective transformation in the age of AI.
Daniel Wildcat
Daniel R. Wildcat is a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma. His service as teacher and administrator at Haskell Indian Nations University spans 40 years. In 2013 he was the Gordon Russell visiting professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. Dr. Wildcat received an interdisciplinary Ph.D. from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Dr. Wildcat is currently the principal investigator of a $20 million, 5 year, NSF-funded project to develop the Rising Voices, Changing Coasts Research Hub at Haskell. His books include Power and Place: Indian Education In America, with Vine Deloria, Jr.; Destroying Dogma: Vine Deloria’s Legacy on Intellectual America, with Steve Pavlik. His book, Red Alert: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge, suggests Indigenous ingenuity – Indigenuity – is required to reduce the environmental damage in the Anthropocene. He is a co-author of the Southern Great Plains chapter of the Fourth National Climate Assessment. Dr. Wildcat’s most recent book is entitled On Indigenuity: Learning The Lessons Of Mother Earth.
