The Age of Artifice
Student Engagement in the Age of Artifice: Culture, Community and Self-Awareness
Fall 2026 - Spring 2027
Student Researchers:
Fortress Okorie, Mathematics ’27
Evan Olds, Computer Science ’27
Eugenia dos Santos da Costa Oliveria, Quantative Economics ’29
Digital technologies, from social media to generative artificial intelligence, have changed the way humans engage with one another. The commodification of these technologies were injected culturally before we could decide on a universal value system to protect the already fragile human essences damaged by constant interaction with artifice. Experts tell us young people are particularly vulnerable, as they are most likely to suffer psychologically, ethically, and spiritually. The result can be college students who find it difficult to build relationships and even to know themselves, as digital technologies make it easy to not expend the effort it takes to be human. Conversely, in an attempt to resist these impacts, a growing number of college students refuse to interact with AI or acknowledge the ways artificial intelligence has become an integral part of their lives. They instead code their segmented resistance as valor and believe it practical and even sustainable. Neither an unhealthy dependence on agentic and generative AI, nor an untenable denial of the technology are the answer to thriving at this volatile moment in human history.
This endevour will create space for students to develop their understanding of agentic and generative AI in a communal setting, and to generate student-centered outcomes and measures for its use in and outside of the classroom. Rooted in the Christian practices of fellowship and discernment, “Student Engagement in the Age of Artifice: Culture, Community and Self-Awareness,” seeks to engage students in directed-research with faculty/staff, and in conversation with one another over a 12-month period. They will study the University of Notre Dame’s DELTA framework and practices of fellowship and discernment to create a set of guidelines and the beginnings of a student-determined framework.
The goal is a student-led, campus-wide dialogue on ethical engagement with generative and agentic AI. Students will develop tools for exploration and communication and determine how they will engage AI (or not) as ethical and fully-realized scholars while at St. Olaf, and as ethical and informed citizens as they enter the world of work or graduate study.