RUNNING THE COURSE

TIPS FOR LEADERS

Venue – you’ll need a comfortable space (but not too comfortable!) with good lighting for reading, but also a decent screen and speaker setup. Any lounge or small room in a church normally used for small group study should be absolutely fine – a small conference room would be ideal.

Videos – whether you are watching online (we’d recommend you’ve got a good broadband connection for this, as buffering is a pain when you’ve gathered together!), watching downloaded videos, the videos are a key part of this course. Top tip – in a smaller group, you might get away with watching on an ipad or laptop – make sure it is placed on a hard surface to maximise volume!

Bibles – it really helps to have a Bible in hand for this course – each study takes a look at different passages relevant to the topic of the Unit being studied.

Leader’s Notes – download to your device, or print off, the relevant session outline and notes. Try to read them through before the session – that will help you, and those you are hosting.

Read the book – It would be helpful for the leader to read Masters or Slaves? before starting the course, there is a lot more detail and illustrations in the book as well as useful tables summarising the 6 key areas of personhood impacted by AI.

COURSE STRUCTURE

The course is made up of a 10 minute introductory video and 3 printable handouts – a talk outline, bible study with questions and leaders notes for the bible study.

There are 9 units in the course and we recommend that the leader should read the book before running the course. It would be worth encouraging participants to read it as well.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Films – if you have the time ‘The Social Dilemma” and ‘Coded Bias’ are two documentaries well worth watching for background. They are available on Netflix.

Talks – there are a number of 2 minute answers to questions, short talks (around 20mins) and longer presentations on AI by Jeremy Peckham at https://jeremypeckham.com/ai/

Books – if you want to dig deeper on the theology of Imago Dei – the image of God, idolatry or transhumanism, the.following books are a good starter;

J. R. Middleton, The Liberating Image – The Imago Dei in Genesis 1, BrazosPress 2005.

G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship, A Biblical Theology of Idolatry, IVP Academic, 2008.

J. Shatzer, Transhumanism and the Image of God, IVP Academic, 2019.