University leaders, business executives, academics, journalists and other prominent individuals have gathered on campus this week for the Notre Dame Summit on AI, Faith and Human Flourishing, hosted by the University’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good and the Notre Dame Ethics Initiative.
The summit plans to discuss the role ethics can play in society’s adaptation to the rise of generative AI, with a particular emphasis on Catholic virtue. From Monday through Thursday, attendees will reexamine the role of Catholic voices in navigating the ways generative AI is transforming human life through a series of lectures and discussion sessions.
The University also officially presented DELTA, a new framework for navigating responsible AI use, at the summit. The acronym stands for dignity, embodiment, love, transcendence and agency. The framework is designed to be a faith-informed resource for institutions grappling with ethical questions surrounding the opportunities and challenges presented by AI.
Beyond an opening Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart with Cardinal Christophe Pierre, which took place Monday at 5:15 p.m., the summit has thus far included a keynote address detailing the new DELTA framework by professor Meghan Sullivan. The conference featured a Tuesday afternoon lecture on AI and the dignity of work by Molly Kinder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, as well as a Wednesday morning session, “The Human Vocation in an Era of AI,” led by Mike Sacasas, the executive director of the Christian Study Center in Gainesville, Florida.
Opening Mass
To initiate the summit, Pierre presided over a Mass in the Basilica on Monday evening. Pierre, who received an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame in 2024, is the apostolic nuncio to the United States, meaning he serves as the Vatican’s ambassador.
In his homily, Pierre discussed the intersection of AI and Catholic social teaching, especially as it relates to the dignity of work, human dignity and care for God’s creation. “Prudence insists that AI must not be used in ways that undermine human dignity or fragment communities,” he said.
Relating to the dignity of work, he warned that “technology must not enslave but serve,” adding that “AI might reduce employment, but for the Church, work is more than income.” According to Pierre, work “engages both our hands and hearts in shaping the world.”
Pierre further noted that reliance on AI might exacerbate existing inequalities. “AI has the potential to deepen the gap between those who benefit and those who are left behind. These are questions not only of efficiency but also of fairness, questions of justice,” he said. Given these concerns, Pierre believes that as a leading Catholic university, Notre Dame has a unique duty to “shape a global Catholic voice on the ethics of artificial intelligence.”
He concluded his homily by urging attendees to use human innovation in ways that glorify the Lord and approach AI with wisdom. “Let us not approach AI with fear. Let us approach it with wisdom. The wisdom that comes from God,” Pierre said.
Keynote address
In her keynote address, Sullivan, the founding director of the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good and director of the Ethics Initiative, formally introduced the DELTA framework. A Wilsey Family College professor of philosophy at the University, Sullivan has also been recognized for her leadership in the development of “God and the Good Life,” Notre Dame’s signature philosophy course.
Sullivan was introduced to the audience by University President Emeritus Fr. John Jenkins. Both ethics initiatives that Sullivan leads are housed within the Jenkins Center for Virtue Ethics, established by the University’s board of trustees in 2024 in his honor. Jenkins spoke on the institute and initiative’s commitment to virtue ethics, noting that they “advance moral understanding and develop compelling responses to the most pressing ethical issues of our era.”
In her opening remarks, Sullivan said, “We are here to contemplate what it would mean for there to be a growth in conscience and in ethics proportionate to the astounding growth in digital technology that we are currently witnessing.”
She spoke about how, throughout examples of large social transformations in history, a strong Christian voice was present to introduce Christian ethics and values into the conversation. To this end, Sullivan cited the example of Hanson Baldwin, a military editor for the New York Times, who utilized Christian scripture in his article about the introduction of nuclear weapons in August 1945 to discern the humanity of the situation.
Sullivan then moved to discuss the 1960s, noting that while Christian denominations were “deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement” and had “a seat at the table” during other moments of the 20th century, there is still a space left for Christians to fill in the current moment with generative AI.
Sullivan described the 21st-century transformation toward a digital economy, stating that Christians were largely absent from the conversation, even as all the world’s knowledge became available in the palm of one’s hand. She noted two reasons for this: “a disaffiliation from Christian institutions” and the rapid transition into the digital age.
“It happened just as quickly as the transition to an atomic world 80 years ago,” Sullivan said. “But it happened in such a widespread and profuse and ubiquitous way that really nobody was taking enough time to stop and ask what kind of significant ethical questions that this transformation was raising.”
This week’s conference aims to bring Catholics back into the conversation as society’s attention turns to AI. “One thing that we believe at Notre Dame is that it would be a catastrophe if Christians were not present for the next phase of the discussion and that visual transformation that we’re currently witnessing,” she said.
“These models are ubiquitous in our day-to-day lives. There are profound questions about what it means to lead a good human life and what it means to serve the common good, which Christians have fantastic insight into, and which will play a role in the bigger pluralistic debate that we are going to have about the world that we’re going to build with this technology,” Sullivan said.
She labeled people turning to chatbots for everything from therapy to spiritual advice as a pressing concern that she believes a Christian ethical framework holds answers to. Sullivan also pointed to other notable concerns, including the “obviously profound existential questions about how we are going to use this technology to transform our economic institutions, our workplaces, our educational institutions.”
Sullivan later added that the lack of human needs being met by schools, churches and other institutions is a significant reason why people are turning to generative AI. She emphasized the urgency in addressing these questions, citing the large investment society has made in generative AI.
Last summer, Sullivan and her colleagues began discussing how they could create a space for these ethical discussions around AI and understand the landscape in which Christian voices and perspectives might fit. With the help of a grant from the Lilly Endowment, she and the institute conducted 137 one-hour interviews with technologists, ethicists and faith leaders from different Christian denominations, journalists and policymakers to ask them what the Christian community could offer to the discussion about AI ethics taking place, as well as what they think it would take to get their voices into the conversation.
Sullivan noted that a key takeaway from the conversations was the Christian community largely agrees with secular voices about creating an “ethical floor,” citing agreement that “we should be building AI that recognizes our right to privacy, we should build AI that’s safe, that’s explainable, that’s responsible to users in key ways that’s fair.” She elaborated that this floor is where virtue ethics enters the conversation, providing a vision of human flourishing. According to Sullivan, Christians bring a unique perspective to this conversation, with their understanding of human flourishing and the common good.
In this introduction to the DELTA framework, Sullivan also spoke on the value of dignity in the conversation about AI. As society strives to optimize productivity, which is becoming increasingly easy with AI, Sullivan emphasized the importance of valuing people not just for their productivity but for who they are as a whole person.
In terms of embodiment, Sullivan discussed how humanity is relational and vulnerable, again highlighting the sacredness of human life. She noted that medical advancements must be met with bioethical questions about where healing and enhancement differ, and that “part of our commitment to embodiment is the idea that what makes human lives meaningful is that they’re lived out in physical space. Physical presence, human presence, is something that is deeply valuable and meaningful for our lives.”
According to Sullivan, technology has had a profoundly negative impact on this deeply valuable human connection, with a particular effect on young people.
“For those of us who work in education, we have a generation of young people who we know now are going to come of age in the shadow of these chatbots and who are going to learn how to form relationships and how to develop authentic human connections with this technology in their midst,” she said.
On transcendence, Sullivan said, “One of the things that we have to navigate as this technology becomes extraordinarily powerful is this thinking that everything good will be made better by software and our social intelligence,” describing the Christian belief that there is objective truth and beauty naturally occurring in the world. The framework emphasizes that not everything must be optimized.
The framework’s emphasis on agency addresses the questions of moral responsibility and decision-making guardrails for generative AI, taking into consideration the pursuit of the good. Sullivan discussed agency in terms of higher education, noting that both students and educators face questions as to whether they should use generative AI and how to navigate its use.
“We are very committed at Notre Dame to the idea that we want this brainwork to be inspired by and grounded in our Christian faith commitment. These teachings and this work could be a benefit to the world,” she said. “We try to navigate that tension right now, trying to think about what it means to be grounded in your faith but serving the whole world.”
Sullivan concluded by reaffirming Notre Dame’s commitment to answering these difficult questions and doing so in a timely manner, given the rapidly evolving nature of modern AI technology.
