BUZZ
Graduates will ‘critically assess AI technologies and shape ethical norms that promote human dignity and equity’
The divinity school at North Carolina’s Shaw University, an historically black institution, will be offering a new EdD program in artificial intelligence and “moral agency.”
Slated for the spring of 2027, the program will teach “how to examine AI ethically,” as well as “AI literacy, algorithmic bias, privacy and transparency, AI governance, human agency, cognitive bias and the impact of AI on marginalized communities,” The News & Observer reports.
The program is targeted at students who already have “at least five years of pastoral leadership experience and a graduate theological degree.” The first cohort of a dozen students is already enrolled, with another 52 students having “expressed interest.”
A university press release states program courses will “integrate moral reasoning, social justice, and applied ethics with the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, preparing graduates to critically assess AI technologies and shape ethical norms that promote human dignity and equity.”
School of Divinity Dean Mark Harden said the program will “prepare ethical leaders” — folks “who can lead organizations in using artificial intelligence responsibly” — as its advance results in many people being out of the loop.
Harden added that the degree, the first at an HBCU, is part of Shaw’s “160-year-old mission of advancing education and social justice.”
“The Southern chaplain who founded the school was getting attention to the need for former slaves to have literacy — to know how to read and write, and to become civic-minded — so that’s why the school got founded,” Harden said. …
“We see ourselves as filling in that gap to respond to people who may get left behind and people who want to stay above the curve,” he said.
Rather than training students purely as AI developers, the program prepares ethical leaders, Harden said, who can lead organizations in using artificial intelligence responsibly.
Harden noted the course will not focus on the latest AI technology and software as they “quickly become outdated,” saying “we don’t want to train one widget, and then we get a new version of a widget in two months.”
