John Alba Cutler, "Intelligence, Imagination, and the Poetics of Faith"

Elder Gong recently observed that artificial intelligence promises to transform our relationships with God, others, the natural environment, and our sense of self. In order to understand that transformation, we must first ask after the nature of human intelligence. What is intelligence? What is its role in our spiritual and moral lives? Rather than pursuing answers through technical fields or neuroscience, this talk explores contemporary religious poetry to suggest that intelligence is both more mysterious than we tend to think and more essential to cultivating our faith.

John Alba Cutler is an associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to an academic book and numerous articles on US Latino literature and poetry, he has published poems and essays in BYU Studies, Irreantum, and Wayfare.