Benedictine College in Kansas creates new center to address AI in the classroom

(OSV News) -- Colleges stand on the front lines of the artificial intelligence debate, balancing how to address students that rely on chatbots to write papers and weighing how to best prepare students to enter a new workforce supported by AI.

One Catholic college is embracing this challenge by starting a center for technology and human dignity that will host talks, discussions and publish resources to help students, teachers and others navigate the complex, ever-changing world of artificial intelligence from a Catholic perspective.

Benedictine College, a liberal arts school in Atchison, Kansas, announced Sept. 7 that it would be launching the Center for Technology and Human Dignity under the patronage of the recently canonized St. Carlos Acutis.

"Pope Leo XIV has asked Catholics to address the rise of artificial intelligence," said Benedictine College president Stephen D. Minnis. "We are excited to dedicate this center under the patronage of St. Carlo Acutis, a model of how Catholics should use new technology thoughtfully but without fear. And its biomedical emphasis will help as we pursue a medical school."

The school tapped Mariele Courtois, a theology professor, bioethicist and member of the Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education's research group on artificial intelligence, to lead the new center.

"Pope Leo is anticipating a new AI industrial revolution which we are already seeing the beginnings of. It brings questions about the dignity of the worker, the relationship of the person to their work, and distancing the person from that important relationship," Courtois told OSV News.

"The center will really address questions like: How do we properly approach technology? What is the right human formation? How to develop technologies that support human flourishing?"

The recent popularization of AI has brought a plethora of moral questions to the forefront of theological discussions, chief among those are questions about the human person and human nature.

"The fact that it is called artificial intelligence is making an implicit claim about what we think intelligence is. It calls into question our ability to talk about what is the nature of the person, and how do we use AI capacities in a way that doesn't limit and impede the human person," Courtois said. "Another big concern is that with all technologies there can be this distancing of the person and I think we see that very evidently with AI."

Colleges are apt institutions to be addressing these questions as they are on the frontlines in the struggle with AI, Courtois believes.

"It's the responsibility of academia to stay current with new developments in order to determine how to respond to them and to explore if there's potential for good uses and how to integrate them," Courtois said. "Discerning when those uses are helpful and applicable and discerning when they can be harmful is really important."

Timothy Kasprzak, a junior at Benedictine, first encountered AI as a senior in high school. He was intrigued by the new technology and its capabilities, yet worried about the potential harm it could inflict on students.

When he arrived at Benedictine and immersed himself in his studies, he began to see the ever-present threat of AI.

"AI is a massive threat to students, but not in the ways that people commonly think," Kasprzak said. "It is causing students to be less creative and less impassioned about their work. AI will always present the most common solution, and while that is a helpful tool to potentially utilize, I see AI taking away creativity, expression and voice from students, trading them for the common consensus of culture."

A few years ago, Benedictine established an AI task force to tackle AI usage among the student body. Courtois has seen the good work that the task force has accomplished and hopes to build off of it.

"The task force has encouraged the faculty to reflect to the students the love they have for their discipline because it is really helpful to motivate them to want to do their work when they see the value in it," Courtois said. "Students realize that it is beyond just getting a grade or simply getting a job, but learning deepens their knowledge of the gift of God's creation and their ability to go into a deeper relationship with God."

Another concern for Courtois that she hopes to address is the way AI threatens to distort student's view of vocation and how they perceive God's call for their life.

"AI leads us to ask a lot of questions such as what is human nature? What is the human person? What is the vocation of the human person?" Courtois said. "The liberal arts and Catholic mission-centered approach of the curriculum at Benedictine allows for students to be thinking about those questions deeply. This center will have the infrastructure that is geared toward helping students think about and discern their vocation in the midst of AI."

The center plans to host talks and discussions with students to help shape their perception and view of AI, encouraging them to embrace a holistic, Catholic approach to this technology as they prepare to enter the workforce.

"After leaving Benedictine, there will be a lot of students who will probably end up in settings where AI is being used and are perhaps even working to develop new technologies," Courtois said. "We want to provide them with a framework to help them notice the needs of their community and that they can use these technologies to support human flourishing rather than trying to take advantage of users' data or users' attention."

As Kasprzak has experimented with AI and talked with peers and friends about the impact of the new technology, Kasprzak has realized the importance of not becoming overattached to AI, rather viewing it as simply a tool.

"Overdependence on AI, due to the ease with which it can be used, the readiness with which it is available, and its spread to every aspect of the internet, is causing students to get unintentionally trapped in workflow loops that cannot only disservice them but also frustrate them," Kasprzak said.

"AI, like so many tools we use to learn in the 21st century, needs to be used in an effective way that promotes human ingenuity and productive learning rather than mindless answer-finding."

When Kasprazak learned that Benedictine would be launching a new center for AI, he was thrilled. He hopes that the new center will help teach students how to have a healthy approach to AI.

"I believe that it will help students put into perspective what AI is meant to be perceived as," Kasprazak said. "It will not only demonstrate that AI is lines of matrix-based code and a tool, not a creator, that needs to be used to benefit humanity and its true ontological flourishing, but also that the dignity and abilities of humanity are something to be cherished and valued, despite what culture may say about technology and humanity."