Levi Checketts, PhD
Concerned about bridging the gap between our desire to do good and our ability to do bad
We live in a time when technology is typically portrayed as a brilliant shiny hope for humankind. We live in "smart" homes, use "smart" watches, look at our "smart" phones, and the newest and hottest "smart" technology is Artificial Intelligence. But why are we convinced that "smart" is the same as good? Ethics of technology requires us to ask difficult questions: how are technologies shaping the moral world around us, what are the intentions (even unconscious ones) of people designing them, how are they being used and what is the impact of these technologies? There are many ways of approaching these questions. Following the framework of Carl Mitcham, we can think of industry-based solutions or humanities-based solutions.
My approach comes from the humanities side. I believe it is important to reflect on what we truly value, how we want to live, what we consider to be the meaning of life and how we have gotten to where we are before we start building technological solutions to our problems. We should also ask whether technological solutions are better than other approaches, and whether they are creating more problems than they solve.​
Me delivering the keynote at Gonzaga's "Value and Responsibility in AI Technologies" Conference, 2025
Ethics of technology needs to be consequentialist--it needs to focus primarily on the effects of new technologies in our society more than the intentions behind using them. Paul Cruzen marked the beginning of the "Anthropocene," a term used to describe the current geological era shaped by human activity, at 1750, around the time steam engines became popular. Our current technological activity can have long-lasting and unpredictable effects, but, as the moral philosopher Hans Jonas argued, we need to approach technologies with a mind set on how they will impact future generations. This means we need to begin now thinking about how technologies like CRISPR, self-driving cars, 3d printing, automated labor, BlockChain Incription, facial recognition software, reusable space ships, and renewable energy sources are affecting society and will affect society in the long run.
Smoke from the Northern California fires in August 2021, on Santa Cruz's Natural Bridges State Beach
About me
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I am an Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University and the Associate Director for the Centre for Applied Ethics there. I hold a PhD in Christian Ethics, but I work in an interdisciplinary fashion, drawing from theological ethics, moral philosophy and social science studies of technology. As I tend to emphasize to my students, we find our understandings of right and wrong from a mixture of sources: our upbringing, our religious traditions, our cultural backgrounds, and, of course, from learning philosophy.
I'm not from Hong Kong originally. I grew up all over the Western side of the US, though my family is from Utah. I lived in Berkeley for 10 years while working on my PhD and looking for full-time work. In the Bay Area, I worked as an adjunct professor at Holy Names University, St Mary's College of California, and Santa Clara University, teaching a wide spectrum of students from professional MBA students to part-time ministry students to adult students and even more traditional undergrads. I also moonlit as a youth pastor with two Bay-Area Korean churches. While this all seems to make for a strange background for a Hong Kong-based tech ethicist, what my time studying, working and living in the Bay Area helped make clear to me is that technological problems affect all of us, and we need global cooperation to address the problems they present.
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I have three books to my name (so far). Most recently, I have edited a collection of essays on East Asian perspectives on AI called Social and Ethical Considerations of AI in East Asia and Beyond. My own monograph, published in 2024 is called Poor Technology: Artificial Intelligence and the Experience of Poverty. It's a rough read if you're expecting either a glowing endorsement or a doomsaying prophecy about AI, but it's a work very near and dear to my heart. A year prior, I helped re-publish Carl Mitcham and Jim Grote's Theology and Technology. The updated pulbication is intended to let new audiences read this important, though out of print, text, and the new version includes new essays and retrospectives. Check out my Books page to see more.
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In addition to this, I'm affiliated with various other organizations. As the Associate Director for CAE, I am always looking to bring in interesting speakers to talk at my university and to collaborate between the researchers we have and other institutions. I direct an Asian-based committee on AI concerns for the Dicastery for Culture and Education in the Holy See, with scholars from across Asia and many disciplines. I'm also a member of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.
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You can also read more about current projects I am working on under my "Current Projects" page. These are things that are ongoing. If you would like to collaborate or contribute to the projects, please feel free to contact me. You can also see other publications and videos I've produced under the "Other works" tab, and a blog I do update frequently under the Blog tab.
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When I'm not doing dry academic work, I like to play computer games, especially in the RPG and Adventure genres. I'm not great at them, so please don't look for a professional-level gamer profile! I do love a good story, though, and I firmly believe video games can be a good medium for interesting narratives. I also like to spend time with my family, sometimes traveling to other countries, and hiking and camping in the winter. Hong Kong is a great place to see both wild nature and the bleeding edge of contemporary culture, so I love living here!
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The full text of my CV is available as a pdf here.
You can also read some of my works on my Academia.edu page, or my faculty page at HKBU.
Gorgeous hike up Mt Butler in Hong Kong, December 2024