Notre Dame’s Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy to explore relevance of Christian ethics in AI debate
Meghan Sullivan, Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy at University of Notre Dame, will discuss the Christian ethical tradition and its relevance for debates around artificial intelligence when she delivers this year’s Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Visiting Lecture April 15, 7 p.m. in Colton Chapel.
Her talk, “Developing Faith-Based Ethical Frameworks for a World of Powerful AI,” is free and open to the public.
Sullivan, who also serves as director of Notre Dame’s university-wide Ethics Initiative and is the founding director of its Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, will examine how Christian faith groups played a central role in major 20th- century debates in applied ethics, especially surrounding nuclear armament, civil rights, and bioethics, but were sidelined for the ethical debates at the dawn of the digital era.
Meghan Sullivan, Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy at University of Notre Dame. (Photo by Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame)
“As we now make the transition from a search and advertisement digital economy to one based on powerful large models and agentic AI, it is more important than ever that we expand our ethical imagination,” she observes. “The rapid development of AI has taken place amid widespread erosion of trust in institutions, a dynamic further exacerbated by social media.”
Sullivan notes that the COVID-19 pandemic significantly deepened already existing divisions between subject matter experts and the general public while making individuals far more reliant on digital tools.
“Overall, there is an accelerating gulf between those creating this new technology and the thinkers and leaders charged with building communities and forming consciences,” she says.
Based on more than 100 interviews with Catholic, evangelical, and mainline Protestant leaders, conducted through a recent planning grant with the Lilly Endowment, Sullivan’s talk will discuss five concepts from the Christian ethical tradition and their relevance for debates about developing and deploying powerful AI. It will also consider the relevance of philosophical and theological thinking about AI given current economic and political conditions around the industry.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Sullivan to our campus to talk about the ethical implications surrounding AI. It’s a highly relevant topic for all of us and exemplifies the need to elevate the humanities in our dialogue about advances in technology,” says President Nicole Hurd. “I encourage everyone to attend as we look for ways to acknowledge the inevitable realities of AI while accepting it into our lives in ethical, responsible ways.”
About Meghan Sullivan
Meghan Sullivan is the Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy at University of Notre Dame. She serves as director of the university-wide Ethics Initiative and is the founding director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good. The hub for university research and teaching in ethics, the Institute includes the new Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C, Center for Virtue Ethics, the Notre Dame–IBM Technology Ethics Lab, and a major grant from the John Templeton Foundation focused on developing the next generation of courses on human flourishing, as well as a robust slate of highly competitive fellowships and programming.
Sullivan is deeply interested in the ways philosophy contributes to the good life and the best methods for promoting philosophical thought. Time Biases, her 2018 book with Oxford University Press, offers philosophical guidance about how to navigate the puzzles that the passage of time poses to rational planning. It was featured in a 2021 New Yorker piece. In 2022, Sullivan published The Good Life Method with Penguin Press (co-authored with her teaching collaborator Paul Blaschko) based on a wildly popular introductory philosophy course she developed at Notre Dame called “God and the Good Life.” Since 2016, “God and the Good Life” has accompanied more than 5,500 Notre Dame students through the process of developing a philosophical plan for their lives. Sullivan’s course has been recognized with major grants from the NEH, Mellon Foundation, and John Templeton Foundation, and over 120 faculty at other universities have participated in course development programs based on the model. In the past, Sullivan has collaborated with faculty in other departments to offer courses on NBC’s The Good Place, Ted Chiang’s science fiction, and Thom Browne’s fashion empire.
Sullivan has been honored with one of Notre Dame’s Joyce Awards for Teaching, the provost’s All-Faculty Team Award, and the City of South Bend’s 40 Under 40 Award. She holds degrees from University of Virginia (B.A.: Philosophy and Politics, Highest Distinction), Oxford (B.Phil: Philosophy), and Rutgers (Ph.D.: Philosophy), and studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (Balliol College).
