CAMDEN — Join Gray Cox, professor at College of the Atlantic, for a presentation and discussion on his book, Smarter Planet or Wiser Earth? on Thursday, April 10, at 6:30 p.m., in the Picker Room at Camden Public Library. All are welcome and light refreshments will be provided.

In his book, Gray Cox asserts that technology employing Artificial Intelligence systems needs to be wiser, not just more efficient and “smarter.” It must balance all the relevant values to make life more just, convivial, ecologically sustainable, and spiritually nourishing. This requires an expansion of the conceptions of rationality used in AI technology as well as in mainstream economics, politics, and ethics.

This book describes the kind of dialogical rationality needed by drawing on contemporary research on conflict resolution and peacemaking including Quaker, Gandhian, Indigenous, and other traditions of collaborative reasoning and ethical choice.

"To respond effectively to threats from ecological collapse, climate change, wars of mutually assured destruction, and out of control technology, it offers systematically wiser ways to reason in our daily lives and collectively transform our dominant institutions," said a news release.

Gray Cox teaches philosophy, peace studies, language learning, and artificial intelligence at College of the Atlantic. He is also a singer/songwriter for the group Fire in the Commons, facilitator of Imaging a World Without Weapons Workshops, and cofounder and current Clerk of the Quaker Institute for the Future.