Thee Quaker Podcast Quakers and AI
Mar 10, 2026
Gray Cox, professor of human ecology and co-founder of the Quaker Institute for the Future, Adina Dershowitz, school director who led AI inquiry in education, and Kenneth Kukier, technology reporter and teacher on Quakers and AI, discuss AI’s environmental costs and energy tradeoffs. They explore AI’s effects on schooling, the tension between frictionless convenience and growth, and whether algorithms can partake in communal discernment.
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AI As A Personal Quaker Research Assistant
- Large language tools act as personal research assistants that can analyze vast primary-source collections quickly.
- Zach Jackson used Google's Notebook LM on ~10,000 pages of early Quaker writings to ask targeted questions and get citations back instantly.
Use AI Only As A First Step In Discernment
- Use AI as a starting tool but return to inner discernment and human conversation for spiritual truth.
- Zach followed the Notebook LM output by closing the app and consulting real people to discern meaning beyond the machine's synthesis.
Generative AI Is Probability Not Understanding
- Modern generative AI predicts likely next words from massive corpora rather than following explicit rules.
- Kenneth Kukier explains models infer probabilistic answers from training text, enabling creative blends like a DVD manual in King James style.