The AI ethics debate looks different from Manila

(RNS) — At my daughter’s recent graduation from a liberal arts college in the Northeast, artificial intelligence was repeatedly booed when it appeared in commencement speeches. The reaction did not strike me as simple technophobia. It sounded like moral apprehension.

My own young adult children voice many of the same concerns that I hear from colleagues in higher education from across North America and Europe: AI may weaken critical thinking, devalue human creativity, consume staggering quantities of energy and water, exploit poorly paid labor and accelerate a culture already too eager to exchange wisdom for convenience. Likewise, as I help develop AI resources for colleagues in theological education through a Wabash Center grant, the objections are palpable. Faculty worry that students using AI will replace their ability to learn to think. Scholars worry that their work may be absorbed without consent. People of conscience wonder whether refusing these systems is the only ethical response.

Then I came to Manila. I am here keynoting at the international triennial conference of the Colleges and Universities of the Anglican Communion, where leaders, drawn from over 150…