Who speaks for the dead?
By Kelly Woods
Conversations about AI, ethics and worship do not often exist together. Yet at the end of April, I found myself experiencing them being thoughtfully woven together by a group of students from The Geelong College.
Finding spaces where faith, community and critical reflection in the same room are rare. This is why being invited to attend Ad Astra – the monthly night service at St David’s Uniting Church in Newtown – felt so significant, because on this night a group of students from The Geelong College weaved together conversations about AI and ethics.
On the night, the service gathered students from The Geelong College alongside parents and members of the wider community. These senior school students offered a glimpse into the kind of thinking and engagement being fostered through the upcoming Ethics Olympiad. It was, in many ways, a “sneaky preview” of what they are preparing for, particularly around the topic of ethics, GreifBots and AI found in Case Study 2.
What struck me immediately was the posture this space invites. The Ethics Olympiad is not about debate in the traditional sense. It is not about argument or point scoring. Instead, it asks students to listen deeply, to engage perspectives beyond their own and to contribute with humility and care. In a digital age shaped by immediacy, headlines and algorithms, the capacity to sit with complexity is no small thing.
In meeting the students, Gabe, Arthur, Belle, Sebastian and Alexi, supported by their teacher Ms Jennifer Stevenson, I observed not just intellectual engagement, but the depth of ethical and relational maturity. As Gabe described, the Ethics Olympiad is about “stretching beyond what I believe and growing my understanding of other people’s views”. That stretching is, in many ways, the work of formation.
The case study that highlighted for us – Digital Afterlife Management – allowed us all to enter terrain that is both deeply contemporary and profoundly human. The students wrestled with questions that many adults are only just beginning to consider. What should be shared after someone has died? Can AI be held responsible for revealing information never disclosed in life? Does closure justify the risk of harm through new or unexpected revelations? How do we navigate grief in a world where digital presence can continue beyond physical life?
But the one question remained the loudest: Who speaks for the dead?
This is not merely a philosophical question. It is deeply pastoral, communal and human. In a digital landscape where data continues, voices can be simulated and identity can be reconstructed, the answer is no longer obvious. In a world where AI continues the stories of people long after the book has finished, is it family, community, institutions, or increasingly, the companies who hold and shape the data of a person’s life?
These are ethical and theological questions that our young people are wrestling with in their schooling years.
It is also important to note the students’ awareness of power. They recognised that companies are not neutral. In collecting and curating vast amounts of personal data, they hold a form of narrative authority. They can shape how a person is remembered, what is revealed and what remains hidden. For young people growing up in this environment, this does not remain theoretical. These conversations are formative, teaching, often implicitly, what it means to be known, to be represented and to have their lives mediated through digital systems.
Another layer of the conversation pushed even further. If digital afterlife technologies are only ever replications, can someone truly give consent to what is generated after their death? Consent assumes awareness, presence and the ability to choose. Yet here we are speaking of responses, interpretations and even ‘memories’ that emerge beyond a person’s lived experience. It raises questions about the limits of technology, the fragility of personhood and the ethical weight of representation.
Moments like this reveal that formation in the digital age is not just about safety or literacy. It is about identity, humanity and meaning. And when we partner these questions of exploration alongside well-known poetry, sometimes they start to sound a little different.
The line from Mary Oliver’s poem: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Placed alongside questions of digital afterlife, this line takes on new depth. If our lives can be stored and extended, what does it mean to truly live? What does it mean to be human?
What made this evening particularly meaningful was that these questions of curiosity and complexity were not set apart from worship, but were instead offered as the message within the Ad Astra service itself. Holding conversations about AI and ethics within a theological and communal setting created a space where faith and contemporary life were not treated as separate concerns, but as deeply connected realities.
In that space, I found myself alongside students, parents and members of the wider community, all engaging together. There was a sense of shared participation that invited intergenerational dialogue, continued to build relationships and established a rhythm in which young people are not left to navigate these questions alone. Equally, it offered space for older generations to engage without needing to have immediate answers, but instead to enter into the same posture of reflection and curiosity.
As I reflect on the evening, I am drawn less to any one conclusion and more to what was being formed through the experience. There was a willingness among the students to listen carefully, to question thoughtfully and to sit with the complexity of the issues being explored. This kind of engagement speaks to something deeper than knowledge alone. It reflects a growing capacity for empathy, attentiveness and ethical awareness.
If we continue to form spaces that nurture this kind of formation, there is genuine hope for how young people might engage the digital world. The invitation is not simply to equip them with skills, but to support them in becoming people who are thoughtful, grounded and attentive to the impact of their choices and relationships. In this way, the work before us is not only about helping young people navigate digital spaces, but about forming them more fully in what it means to be human within them.