{"id":9845,"date":"2026-10-20T21:24:05","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T21:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/?p=9845"},"modified":"2026-10-20T21:24:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T21:24:05","slug":"opinion-cucs-embrace-of-ai-is-antithetical-to-christian-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/?p=9845","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: CUC\u2019s Embrace of AI is Antithetical to Christian Values"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

According to a Pew Research study<\/a>, 50% of Americans are more concerned than excited about increased use of AI in daily life. About half of Americans say AI will worsen people\u2019s ability to think creatively and form meaningful relationships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid the growing skepticism of AI technology among the wider American public, CUC announced its purchase of AI software Boodlebox<\/a>, making AI more accessible to students and faculty alike. Though the announcement was accompanied by assurances that the school would make efforts to ensure that AI is integrated responsibly and ethically, on Instagram<\/a>, students weren\u2019t buying it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One user wrote, \u201cI wrote my entire 27 page thesis without using AI. I regularly turn in assignments and get As without using AI. It doesn\u2019t benefit me, and is almost exclusively used for undetected shortcuts and cheating, which the university is enabling by allowing this. There is no \u2018responsible\u2019 use or way to truly enforce it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The backlash to the Boodlebox purchase highlights the hypocrisy of the matter. To invest in technology that has proven itself to be environmentally devastating and detrimental to human health and dignity is bad enough. Calling ourselves a Christian institution while doing it is even worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been countless studies linking the AI industry to environmental issues. Data centers, the infrastructure that allows AI to function, have been popping up at an unprecedented rate all over the country, guzzling local water supplies and spewing carbon emissions. Researchers at Cornell University<\/a> found that by 2030, the current rate of AI growth would put 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually. That\u2019s the equivalent to adding 5 to 10 million cars to U.S. roadways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to water consumption, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute<\/a>, a medium-sized data center consumes around 110 million gallons of water per year, the equivalent of the water usage of 1,000 households. Annual water usage for a large data center is equivalent to a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

80% of the water used by these data centers evaporates. The rest, which is often contaminated by \u201cforever chemicals\u201d known as PFAs, leeches into local waterways<\/a>. PFAs have been known to cause organ and reproductive issues, and have been linked<\/a> to high rates of cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boodlebox advertises<\/a> itself as being a more sustainable option, saying that it uses 96% fewer tokens than other AI services, thus reducing the carbon footprint. A token is a basic unit of text that an AI model reads and processes. While it may be that Boodlebox is more environmentally friendly than other alternatives, that does not eliminate its environmental impact. It still contributes, albeit at a smaller rate, to the carbon emissions, excessive water use, and pollution that the AI industry is responsible for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This waste and pollution especially affects the Chicagoland area, which is considered the data center capital of the midwest<\/a>. Those impacted by the AI industry are not far-away, unknown people, but our own neighbors, communities, and classmates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a human cost, too. As professor of psychology Brian Sundermeier told The Spectator, as AI models are being trained, someone needs to feed it that information and make sure it is appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The BBC reported<\/a> that people moderating the materials that program AI models like Chat GPT often emerge severely traumatized, having been subjected to the very worst images and videos humanity has to offer. Even as advancements towards fully automated moderation are made, a human moderator is still necessary because AI models do not understand context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of this work is outsourced to the global south<\/a>, to countries such as Kenya, the Philippines, and Colombia, where workers are underpaid and made to sign NDAs. In a report<\/a> by human rights group Equidem, researchers documented over sixty cases of serious mental health harm in content moderators linked to the graphic content they had to view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a university, we should be concerned about the exploitation of these communities under the AI industry. By investing in the industry, CUC becomes complicit in the abuse and psychological harm AI inflicts. At best, CUC is sweeping this human cost under the rug and pretending it doesn\u2019t exist; at worst, it is saying that it is worth it for progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vice President for Academic Affairs Robert Balza says that AI is here to stay, and therefore we must embrace it if we do not want to be left behind. And he is not the only one; throughout our country and world, there are a whole chorus of voices arguing that AI is necessary progress. But any \u201cprogress\u201d that comes at the cost of our world and fellow human beings is not progress at all. Why must we embrace something that goes against our morals, something that causes so much pain for a small uptick in productivity? That is not biblical. It is not moral. And it certainly is not putting Christ at the center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other moral leaders have made this very clear. On May 15, Pope Leo XIV famously signed his first encyclical<\/a> on AI, Magnifica humanitas<\/em>, in which he expressed a strong conviction on the subject of artificial intelligence: it must be disarmed. He emphasized that this is not just about restraining dangerous technologies, but building a more just future, preserving the dignity of human beings through accountability and opening a genuine moral dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is not enough to invoke efficiency, nor to celebrate the benefits of innovation, if they are built on a chain of exploitation that remains deliberately hidden,\u201d Pope Leo wrote in the encyclical<\/a>. \u201cIf technology promises emancipation, yet produces new forms of global subordination, it stands in contradiction to the fundamental principle of human dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though CUC is a Lutheran institution, it still has the same responsibility as other Christian denominations to combat exploitation and unnecessary suffering. CUC\u2019s vague claims that AI will be integrated in a responsible way is not enough. Saying that there will be an AI taskforce with a single conscientious objector is not enough. CUC has provided no detail, no real plan, as to how it hopes to meaningfully address the real ethical issues that AI poses. That concern should be at the very forefront of the issue; instead, it has been pushed aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless, it is impossible to ethically integrate AI into education. To contribute to an industry that has inflicted so much damage to our world and our neighbors for a non-essential purpose, such as getting a research paper done a little quicker, is immoral. There is never a task in education where one needs<\/em> to use AI, and using it exacerbates real, impactful problems for absolutely no real purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a Christian institution, CUC should have an interest in protecting human dignity and upholding justice on campus and beyond. CUC\u2019s purchase and encouragement of AI technology is in direct contradiction with that principle. Concordia cannot claim to \u201cstand tall\u201d for truth and justice when it disregards those values when it gets inconvenient, uncomfortable, or contradictory to the whims of wider society. This purchase is not the birth of a new era of education like CUC would have us believe; it is the death of the values that makes CUC so special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo by Nate Clayton.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to a Pew Research study, 50% of Americans are more concerned than excited about increased use of AI in daily life. About half of Americans say AI will worsen people\u2019s ability to think creatively and form meaningful relationships.  Amid the growing skepticism of AI technology among the wider American public, CUC announced its purchase […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":9852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-showcase"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9845"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9857,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9845\/revisions\/9857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}