Friday, October 16, 2026
2:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. (GMT+07:00) Yogyakarta
Location: Sanata Dharma University Yogyakarta
The idea that AI will usher in a world of material abundance and shared prosperity is orthodoxy in much of Silicon Valley. For more critical observers, including Pope Leo in his recent encyclical Magnifica humanitas, AI carries risks of greater inequality, climate crisis, and war. Dare we hope for a positive AI future of more equality, solidarity, and peace—not less? Might AI have the potential to help bridge, rather than deepen, the North/South divide? Mohsin Hamid, Nesrine Malik, and Kohei Saito will address these questions in conversation with Rev. Antonio Spadaro, S.J.
Participants
Mohsin Hamid
Mohsin Hamid is an acclaimed British Pakistani author known for creative fiction and commentary that address contemporary global issues. His recent novels include The Last White Man (2022) and Exit West (2017), which received the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. His book The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and later adapted into a successful film. Hamid’s engagement with themes of political turmoil, cultural displacement, and shifting individual and collective identities informs his influential essays on contemporary affairs in leading outlets including The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Paris Review.
Nesrine Malik
Nesrine Malik is an acclaimed British Sudanese author and journalist known for her wide-ranging commentary on issues of race, identity, politics, and international affairs. She is the author of We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent (2019) and has columns in leading outlets including the Guardian, New York Times, and Washington Post that address topics ranging from Islamophobia and feminism to African politics, with deep insights into the ways colonial and postcolonial legacies shape our contemporary world. Malik received the 2021 Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism.
Kohei Saito
Kohei Saito is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Tokyo and a leading contemporary Marxist thinker. His most recent book, Capital in the Anthropocene (2020), has sold more than half a million copies in Japan and was published in English as Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto in January 2024. Saito’s previous book, Karl Marx's Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy (2017), which creatively explored the ecological dimension of Marx’s thought and its contemporary relevance, won the Deutscher Memorial Prize.
Rev. Antonio Spadaro, S.J.
Rev. Antonio Spadaro, S.J. (moderator), is the undersecretary for the Vatican's Dicastery for Culture and Education. Before that he served as the editor in chief of the Jesuits’ biweekly review, La Civiltà Cattolica, a post he assumed in 2011. Since entering the Society of Jesus in 1988, he has worked in a variety of capacities, including joining the review’s community in 1998. Fr. Spadaro considers his work to be part of the new cybertheology–“thinking faith in the Internet age.” He has also served on the Georgetown University Board of Directors.
Accessibility
Please email globaldialogues@georgetown.edu by October 9 with any accessibility requests. A good-faith effort will be made to fulfill all requests made after this date.