From the organizers:
The North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS) has issued a call for papers for a fall conference on “Islam and AI: Challenges and Opportunities.” The conference will be held online on Nov. 20th. Abstracts are due July 11th.
Information technology, broadly defined, refers to the ways in which information is presented, preserved, accessed, and shared. Just as tag paper and the rise of books in the ninth century revolutionized the preservation and transmission of knowledge and information from primarily oral/aural modes to written ones and the advent of the printing press in the fifteenth century expanded the transmission of knowledge in writing, digitization and the Internet have granted unprecedented access to information and ideas. Today, artificial intelligence is revolutionizing research and content creation. The conference will explore the challenges, opportunities, and responsibilities presented by the rise of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) for Islamic and Muslim studies.
To understand how A.I. could have an impact on Islamic scholarship, one needs to review how the “authenticity” of religious knowledge was ensured through the decades-old process of the transmission of Islamic knowledge since the 7th century. This age-old transmission process (embodied in the isnads) preserved the historical background of Islamic scholarship and heritage. Could A.I. disrupt this mode of transmission? Could A.I. with its strength in language and unparalleled level of creativity become a religious authority and alter Islamic beliefs and practices?
If digitized data stored in A.I.’s database pertaining to ethnic and cultural knowledge of a people is inaccurate, could A.I. distort the history of a people for future generations? Also, if A.I.’s digitized data excludes historical aspects of a people’s culture, like religion and language, could the true history of that culture disappear or be distorted?
We invite a diverse range of papers from professors in the humanities, and social and natural sciences. Some of the questions that papers may address include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Authenticity of Islamic Religious Authority: The Ulama vs A.I.
- Can the Development of A.I.’s Algorithms Be Monitored to Align with Islamic Moral Standards?
- Training A.I. in Classical Islamic Sources
- Rigor and Responsibility in Using A.I. for Research in Islamic and Muslim Studies
- Ensuring Accuracy in A.I. Generated Content about Islam and Muslims
- Opportunities and Challenges of Using A.I. as a Teaching Assistant in Islamic or Muslim Studies
- Assessing the Breadth, Depth and Accuracy of A.I.’s Knowledge about Islam
- Addressing Hegemony and Cultural Biases in A.I.
- A.I., Ethics and Morality
For applications details and more information, visit the link here.