-- In an era where artificial intelligence increasingly permeates everyday life, Newman University recently convened a timely conference examining the ethical dimensions of emerging technologies. The two-day event brought together business leaders, academics, technologists, and even a high school student to explore how society can harness AI's benefits while mitigating potential harms.
"It's probably time to prepare to live and work with AI. It's just gonna be hard to avoid," said David Cochran, Dean of Newman's School of Business & Technology, setting the stage for discussions. "The question becomes how do we prepare to live and work with AI?"
Cochran opened the conference by highlighting the staggering financial commitments major technology companies are making in AI development: Amazon planning $100 billion, Microsoft $80 billion, Google's parent company Alphabet $75 billion, and Meta $65 billion. He also noted the White House's endorsement of a $500 billion investment in OpenAI.
These investments are already yielding results. Cochran cited metrics showing dramatic improvements in AI reasoning capabilities, with systems now achieving 50-60% accuracy on competition mathematics and surpassing human expert performance on PhD-level science questions.
"We know that when a doctor utilizes AI to help sort through diagnostic evidence, they increased their accuracy in diagnosis by about 30%," Cochran said, illustrating AI's real-world impact.
The Third AI Hype Cycle: What's Different This Time?
Despite the excitement, Troy Tabor, Director of Innovation Intelligence at Wichita State University and panel moderator, provided historical context: "This isn't new. This is actually kind of the third hype cycle of this exact type of AI. It started in the late sixties."
Tabor explained that past AI enthusiasm followed similar patterns—grand promises of world-changing technology followed by more modest practical applications. However, panelists identified key differences in today's landscape, particularly around accessibility.
"What's changed is the accessibility to it," explained Dave Cunningham, CEO of software consultancy Flint Hills Group. "There's a mobile app now for chat GPT... That didn't really exist before."
This accessibility has democratized AI tools, potentially leveling playing fields across socioeconomic divides. "If we can put the same tutor that the richest person in the world can get in the hands of the poorest kid, that's awesome," said Travis Scheopner, Director of Enterprise Data Products and Strategy at Koch Engineered Solutions.
A fascinating tension emerged between educational and professional contexts. "What in the educational world or academia world is considered cheating? In the business world, we call increasing productivity," observed Scheopner, highlighting how institutions must recalibrate their approaches.
This raises challenging questions for educational institutions preparing students for a world where AI augmentation is standard practice. Newman University itself is addressing this challenge through new certificate programs in technology ethics launching this fall across its Schools of Business and Technology, Catholic Studies, and Arts and Sciences.
Rather than focusing on which jobs might vanish, panelists reframed the conversation around evolution and value creation. "It's not who will keep their jobs... Is the important thing keeping your job or is the important thing having a job where you create value?" asked Scheopner.
Grant Johnson, who leads operations transformation at Invista, described how roles will likely transform through progressive AI integration: "First we'll start off where you are given all the information right there, there's no more searching. And then later on we'll be moved to a point where it gives a recommendation of an action."
The panel emphasized that distinctly human skills will become increasingly valuable. Scheopner highlighted his "three C's: curiosity, concepts (logical thinking, analytical thinking, critical thinking) and communication." Several panelists stressed that while AI excels at answering questions, humans remain superior at formulating meaningful questions.
Beyond Efficiency: Technology's Proper Place
Dr. Christopher Thompson, Academic Dean of St. Paul Seminary, delivered a keynote address that examined deeper philosophical questions around technology's role in human flourishing.
"The highest exercise of the human intellect isn't captured in its ability to solve problems, but to contemplate the truth," Thompson argued, challenging the assumption that efficiency should be technology's primary aim.
Thompson contrasted two understandings of knowledge: the modern view of humans bringing small lights of understanding into a dark, meaningless universe versus what he called the Thomistic view that "things are thick with light. I am the one in the dark. I walk out into a universe of brilliant diamonds, so thick with intelligibility, so brimming with meaning."
This distinction, he suggested, has profound implications for technological ethics. If nature already contains deep intelligibility and inherent purposes, then technological intervention requires reverence and restraint: "Before we propose to modify nature to suit our expectations, it would be wise to consider how our own ways of acting may be in need of modification."
Thompson distinguished between two conceptions of memory relevant to technological ethics: "memory as data repository" versus "memory as narrative construction." While AI excels at the former, Thompson argued true wisdom requires the latter—not just information recall but narrative understanding within ethical frameworks.
"If wisdom were simply a matter of retrieving past data...the idiot savant would rule, and the reference librarian would serve as the philosopher king," he remarked.
Looking Ahead: Human-AI Partnership
What emerged across both conference sessions was a vision of human-AI partnership rather than replacement.
"Continue being human. Continue making art or making whatever that you do. Don't let AI take it over," urged high school student Ailey Tabor, capturing this sentiment. "I believe in the pursuit of being human."
Newman University's upcoming certificate programs in technology ethics aim to prepare students for this complex landscape. As Dean Cochran advised: "Assume today's AI is the worst that you'll ever use... Embrace AI as a coworker. Don't surrender your own human agency or responsibility."
The conference demonstrated that navigating AI's ethical dimensions requires ongoing conversation across disciplines. As moderator Troy Tabor noted, those who gain experience using these tools thoughtfully "will probably have a lot better opportunity at the new jobs of the future than those that just don't."
Learn about Newman's ethics-focused Master of Science in Data Science: https://newmanu.edu/academics/graduate-programs/ms-data-science
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Organization: Newman University
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