2026 Davidson Lecture: “Attention and the Sacred in the Age of AI”
March 17, 2026 at 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
| Location: | 303 Paterson Hall |
| Cost: | Free |
- In-person event
- 303, Paterson Hall, Carleton University
- 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6
- Contact Chris Jensen , Chris.Jensen@carleton.ca
The Edgar and Dorothy Davidson Lecture was established in 1983 and is sponsored by the College of the Humanities. The lecture brings a prominent scholar in the area of religious studies and related areas to speak at Carleton.
Presenter Bio:
Meghan O’Gieblyn is the author of *God Human Animal Machine* and the essay collection *Interior States*. She is the recipient of three Pushcart Prizes and the 2023 Benjamin H. Danks award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She writes for The New Yorker, Harper’s, Wired, The New York Review of Books, and other magazines, and her essays have been anthologized in The Best American Essays and The Contemporary American Essay. Her book *Will and Attention*, a bibliomemoir that engages with the work of Simone Weil, will be published by Doubleday in October.
https://www.meghanogieblyn.com/
Lecture Abstract:
What is the value of attention in the age of generative AI? Despite the endless hand-wringing about waning attention spans, we are building technologies that are designed to abnegate attention, allowing us to offshore to machines writing, coding, and other cognitive tasks that once required a great deal of focus. This raises a larger, philosophical question: Is attention simply a means to various ends? Or does it have virtue for its own sake? This talk will look to a lineage of thinkers, including Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, and the Desert Fathers, who wrote about the intrinsic value of attention and its relationship to morality, the will, and spiritual devotion. At a moment when intellectual work — and thinking itself — is being rapidly automated, their work reminds us that attention is ultimately sacred and foundational to what it means to be human.