“Be very afraid,” or “Be not afraid”?
In the face of the artificial intelligence revolution, those were the options posed at the Symposium on Transforming Culture at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, on September 4-5.
Watch the three keynote lectures of the 2026 Symposium on Transforming Culture here.
The Symposium, an annual conference at the college, gathers scholars, field professionals, religious, clergy, and students for fellowship and conversation. The Symposium took place partially in the new classically designed Moritz Library in D’Aniello Hall. Architect Eric Bootsma, who played a role in its design, was one of the Symposium speakers and provided explanations of the structure. The topic of AI was explored by more than 65 presenters, including both critics of its dehumanizing effects and those advocating ways to use it responsibly.
The words of the recently deceased Christian poet Wendell Berry put it best:
“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”
Kristen Collier: Human Medicine
Kristen M. Collier M.D. (above), one of three keynote speakers at the conference, quoted Berry as part of her presentation, “AI and the Future of Medicine.”
“My patients are very worried by our increasing technological paradigm. They already feel dehumanized by it,” said Collier, a family practitioner and associate professor at the University of Michigan Medical School.
The Symposium was cosponsored by Benedictine College’s Center for Technology and Human Dignity promoting Catholic digital and biomedical ethics.
“I went into medicine to take care of people. Not diseases, not pathologies, but human beings who are someone’s mother, friend, or lover,” said Collier. “These things are taking place inside someone who has inviolable dignity and inherent worth.”
She added, “This is the time for Benedictine College and others to build the medical system that respects the human person.”
Marla Golden, the founding dean of Benedictine College’s proposed School of Osteopathic Medicine was in attendance.
Golden told the Symposium attendees, “We are building the school [Dr. Collier] is calling for. And we intentionally decided that a portion of our first-year curriculum would leave machines and electronics out so that students can encounter others fully.”
Paul Scherz: Mentors, Not Chatbots
A second keynote speaker, Notre Dame theologian Paul Scherz, spoke about the need for personal, human mentorship and argued that AI chatbots can’t do what human beings do.
“Stoics connected virtue with an art of living,” he said, explaining how mentorship once meant a deep immersion. Mentees “spent time with an illustrious citizen, saw when he woke, ate, bathed, etc. This would teach them how to live well and wisely. These aspects of embodied life all emerge out of the details of living.”
He said that AI can imitate technique, but it cannot offer the embodied expression of important truths — and it can’t do one other thing.
“One difficult skill ancients in Rome and Greece had to learn was parrhesia — bold and risky truth telling,” he said. The willingness to speak truth to power led to the deaths of several great philosophers.
But in the case of chatbots, “AI is not a person, thus it cannot be a bearer of responsibility.” Worse, he said, AI is designed by corporations that know that risky truth telling would make their products unpopular.
Matthew Sanders: Two Futures
The final speaker was Matthew Sanders of Longbeard, who has been digitizing magisterial teachings to make them part of the data sets AI uses to answer questions. His products include Magisterium AI, Vulgate AI, and Ephrem.
He said this calendar year has been significant for AI because this was the year “the machines stopped being a consultant and became a ‘colleague.’” He said the rapid rise of AI will continue and that “what is coming will be 10 times bigger than the Industrial Revolution and arrive maybe 10 times faster.”
He worried that, since in its bare essentials, “AI is electricity turned into ‘intelligence’” in the United States, our ambitions exceed our energy supply, while “China generates twice the energy it needs.”
He painted a portrait of two possible futures. One is a “dark path” that keeps to the status quo, in which, as Pope Leo XIV pointed out in Magnifica Humanitas, “computational resources and regulatory influence remain in the hands of a few.” At the end of that path is a world where human beings are subservient to the technocratic paradigm.
The other is a “golden future” in which households have their own AI technology and its proper use allows Catholics to take the lead in building community, pursue craftsmanship, and lead more human lives.
He summed up:
“We are the generation posted at the fork, before the defaults harden into destiny. The machines won’t decide what we do. Do not let the algorithm write your story. Use technology wisely … don’t let technology use you.”
A Needed Conversation
Kansas City, Kansas, Archbishop Emeritus Joseph Naumann ended the Symposium by praying for the fully human future to prevail.
Benedictine College theologian Matthew Muller organized the event around the theme “The Church in an Algorithmic Age” in hopes of fostering the kind of robust dialogue the speakers brought.
“We expect these conversations to include a fair share of debate and discussion,” he said. “Our presenters come from a variety of disciplines and professional fields. Algorithms and artificial intelligence impact all of these.”
Benedictine College President Stephen D. Minnis said the Symposium puts Benedictine College in step with Pope Leo XIV’s efforts to address the challenges posed by artificial intelligence.
“This Symposium is great example of our mission of educating within a community of faith and scholarship,” he said. “It is only through mastering these new technologies, rather than being mastered by them, that our students will help Transform Culture in America.”
By Editorial Staff
