Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
We had a conversation in Academic Senate just a week or so ago, and the conversation was around, well, who will be the students most interested in this? And I actually think that while we will have some STEM students who will want to get a degree in AI, we, we think the, the frame of the program that will be most attractive will be as an adjunct to other professional degrees like like nursing or business or architecture or humanities, where this becomes a certificate or a minor, you know, sort of it’s, but informed by a more robust program that really helps us build the deep understanding that we need to deliver this, this adjunct program
Joe Gottlieb:
That’s Peter Kilpatrick, president of the Catholic University of America, describing how their ethical AI degree program starting in the fall of 2025, will likely enrich a variety of other degree programs. As an adjunct, we discussed the obligations and opportunities for ethical AI, what led Catholic University to create such a program, and how it fits so well with their mission and the origins of higher education. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Welcome to TRANSFORMED, a Higher Digital podcast focused on the new why’s, the new what’s and the new how’s in higher ed. In each episode, you will experience hosts and guests pulling for the resurgence of higher ed, while identifying and discussing the best practices needed to accomplish that resurgence. Culture, strategy and tactics, planning and execution, people, process, and technology. It’s all on the menu because that’s what’s required to truly transform. Hello, welcome and thanks for joining us for another episode of TRANSFORMED. My name is Joe Gottlieb, president and CTO of Higher Digital, and today I am joined by Dr. Peter Kilpatrick, president of the Catholic University of America. Peter, welcome to TRANSFORMED.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Great to be here. Joe, what do you want to talk about today?
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, I’m glad you asked. I wanna talk about your thoughts on the obligations and opportunities for ethical AI, but first I’d love it if you could share a little bit about your background and your personal journey and how you got connected into the world of higher ed.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Yeah, so I’m a lifelong learner. I love to learn. I’ve, I’ve discovered that about myself when I was a young lad used to always bug my mom by asking her why all the time. And she, she, after three or four answers to why, she’d be like, well, go read about that or something. And after I got through my undergrad and grad program, I, I, I explored jobs, decided to go into teaching, and I’ve been a professor at a university for 41 years. So and then over that time got into higher ed administration, and now I find myself as a president.
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, you’re a quite humble man, Peter, you that that tenure that you had while a professor share a little bit more about that too, because I know you’re very deep in your field and you’ve written a ton of papers, you have patents, and and I think it’s an interesting contrast for someone who’s at the helm of of the Catholic University of America. If you don’t mind sharing that too.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Well, I’m, I’m very blessed. My my undergraduate degree was in chemistry. I discovered early on that I, I really didn’t want to be a chemist that was not sufficiently stimulating to me, and I was encouraged to go into engineering, chemical engineering. And there’s, there’s actually a whole fraternity of chemical engineers who are presidents of universities. I I know a bunch of them. So, you know, chemical engineers in, in the academy tend to publish a lot. We tend to get involved in practical problem solving. So I had the occasion to work at startup companies and develop patents and so on. So it ha it has been a very interesting career. But the most interesting part, I think, has been leading large teams and leading the university.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yeah, I wanted to pull that out because I think it will be clear as we get into this topic how you’re leveraging this interesting combination of your background and your training and that fraternity that you’ve drawn upon, and how it’s fed your leadership in a context like Catholic University. So let’s dive in. This is gonna be fun. So I’d like to frame this up by asking you the starting question. What motivated Catholic University to develop an ethical AI degree program in the first place?
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
So, yeah, we’ve, we’ve been b long before I got to Catholic University our computer science department and our school of engineering where that department resides had been engaging with corporate and government partners in this whole area of ethical ai. But we didn’t have a degree program, and it’s only been in the last really year that, that we’ve explored, well, what would it take for us to launch a, a new degree program in, in ethical AI? And what motivated us was many people may know that AI has some challenges. In fact, I would argue that they’re serious challenges. Certainly the, the people who create the foundation models that are central to AI have bias. And then the, the data that you test your foundation models on can be biased if, if you have an adequately incorporated data that reflects, you know, the whole population of people that AI will be applied to, or the whole population of data that’ll be applied to.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
And then there’s another more subtle thing that a lot of people don’t know about AI works. I’m a engineer, so I know this, it works on a, what’s called a steepest descent gradient Foundation model. And those models tend to get hung up in local mini as as you go through optimization. And as a result, some of the results from AI can be very ambiguous. You can give it, you can give AI exactly the same prompt and come back with a different answer. And so we thought this was, these were important problems to try to tackle. And so creating an AI degree program that addresses that, where the students not only learn the technical part of ai, but they learn the philosophy and logic and ethics associated with addressing those concerns with ai. We thought that was a really good area for us to get involved in because of our mission as a university, you know, we, we try to do things very ethically and we try to elevate ethics as an important dimension of, of human experience. And we also think AI is gonna be a hugely important area both now and in the future. So in the future, we expect everyone will have an AI copilot and, and want to have the opportunity to be knowledgeable in this regard.
Joe Gottlieb:
I think that makes a lot of sense, and I’d love to dig a little bit more deeply into that. So I’m hearing you talk about, at least, well, I’m hearing two dimensions. You tell me if there are two or more dimensions in the way you’ve thought about this problem. There’s, there’s for sure. This latest development in ai, of course, has been driven by the invention, really, the, the, the, the effectiveness of large language models, which really has been the breakthrough. So, so AI’s been around for a long, long, long time. We both know that. But this breakthrough that into the consumer world has been the utility of this ask this thing anything, and it will surprise you with, with surprisingly articulate and, and at least seemingly accurate and confident responses. And that’s, that’s been the craze, right? And as we know that it is imperfect, but to your point, the folks that are trying to make it as effective as possible as we, I think we said in, in one of our, our previous conversations, they look like you and me, they tend to be white men, right? <Laugh>
Joe Gottlieb:
Like, and that’s, that’s just a fact of, of our demographics of, of some of these technologies. It is not true to the extreme, but it is true in the, in the, at the average level, right? So it has this influence. And so they may also tend to be people that are privileged, right? What, no matter their color, they’re people that are, you know, have professional jobs working in the area of tech. So the net, the net effect of that is they at least have a point of view that is affected by their, their situation in life. But what about the, another dimension here, which is accuracy and truth and, and how much of your focus on ethics is actually also has the ambition to ponder how accuracy and truth is, is a factor in AI?
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Yeah, Joe, I, I think that’s a big part of our motivation. You know I, universities were born with an intense purpose to follow the truth wherever it leads. And so truth telling is just, it’s intrinsic to the value proposition of a university. In fact, I think Harvard’s original motto was veritas, and I’ve forgotten what the other part was, but Veritas is, is critical Yeah. To what it means to be a university. And so for us, that second element is, is key. And the way to try to tackle that, you know, we have a tremendous philosophy department here at the Catholic University of America and these are philosophers that are schooled not only in the most modern philosophy, but also in the history of philosophy. And you know, what they say about history you know, if you don’t know it, you’re doomed to repeat it. And so we, we try to give our students, you know, all the tools that they need to, you know, understand human knowledge at a, at a deep enough level that they can query whatever they’re doing professionally about the truthfulness of what they’re doing. And we, so, yeah, we think both those elements are important and we’re excited to be building a program that captures both of those.
Joe Gottlieb:
Excellent. Well, let’s talk about the program itself. Tell me a bit about what it involves and how you got there.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Well, as I mentioned, it’s, it’s a combination of you know, the computer science technical elements of machine learning and how do you large language programming and building foundation models, you know, all the bits and pieces of this is how you put AI together and make it work coupled with philosophy, logic, ethics. And then of course, our core curriculum, which you know, is here at the Catholic University of America, we’re pretty big on you know, the Catholic intellectual tradition, which tends to focus the core on what I would call truth, beauty, and goodness. You know, it’s the humanities, it’s science, it’s philosophy, theology, but all vectored towards how does the human intellect understand these transcendentals hu truth, beauty, and goodness. So that’s, that’s the nature of the program. We’re, we’re excited about it.
Joe Gottlieb:
So I know you’re planning for a launch in the fall of 2025. That’s right around the corner, about a about a year out. Right. and, and so you must be, I imagine you already had a flow of students coming into your existing departments CS and EE and of course philosophy, but, but, you know, how are you even thinking about for example, recruiting that first class and, and, and is there a tar, how big is this thing? How big are you planning it to be? Are you intentionally keeping it small at first? Are you looking to really chase the growth on this? How does that fit into the, the overall evolution of Catholic U and, and its its growth intentions?
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Yeah. So good question, Joe. We’re, you know, we’re trying to do very innovative things with our academic programming. And this particular new academic program was really prompted by some conversations that we’ve had with corporate leaders with some people who ran companies that preceded some of the key AI companies. So we, we actually had a, a benefactor who owned a company that was bought by Nvidia you know, many years ago. And that really became part of the backbone of Nvidia. So, you know, this was a natural thing for us to do, and we had most of the courses already in the hopper, if you will. But we do think this is a, this is a growth area. We, we had a conversation in academic senate just a week or so ago, and the conversation was around, well, who will be the students most interested in this? And I actually think that while we will have some STEM students who will want to get a degree in ai, we, we think the, the frame of the program that will be most attractive will be as an adjunct to other professional degrees like like nursing or business or architecture or humanities, where this becomes a certificate or a minor, you know, sort of it’s, but informed by a more robust program that really helps us build the deep understanding that we need to deliver this, this adjunct program.
Joe Gottlieb:
Okay. So from the start thinking about how you ha you stand up a full degree program, but you also package it as a minor that can be applied and, and, and really enrich a variety of other programs that you have that makes a lot of sense. Seeing sounds similar to what I see a lot like in data science, data analytics. Actually, my, my youngest son is is graduating from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, this this coming summer, and he has a certificate, he has economics degree, and he has a certificate in data science. So that seems like a, a, a nice play to, to net out not only market fit, but really capture the applied nature of, of this AI technology. Interesting. Yeah.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Yeah. I, I think you know, as I’ve shared with you and another conversation, I think in the future, in the very near future everyone’s gonna have an AI copilot. And so, you know, when if you go online and you type in chat GPT or open ai, and you sign up and, you know, you get an account, you know, you quickly realize, I don’t, even though this is easy to use, I don’t know exactly know what I’m doing here. And, and then you realize I, I really need some background information on how do I exploit this tool in an optimal way away from my situation. Well, we, we want our students to both have we want those trained professionals who are gonna go out and create AI, but we also want our students to have the benefit of, you know, having a jumpstart on, well, this is how I use AI to really enhance my productivity in my, my new role as data analyst or you know, finance you know, analyst or whatever.
Joe Gottlieb:
Isn’t it interesting that something this advanced could actually become a required course in all programs, literally, like, you know well, it’s hard to think of an example actually, because few things are so universal. Yes. But I I could easily imagine all institutions starting to sign, you know, have this as a required course because every student that graduates will be better equipped if they know the basics of AI, right. To be, to function in society.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
It’s almost like part of your core curriculum.
Joe Gottlieb:
Exactly. okay. Well, and this is another, this is a, as I call them, bonus questions that I haven’t give you a heads up on. But I know you’re up to it. So can we reflect for a moment on what, if any strategy Catholic has had about growing via online education? And if there’s anything going on there that, that, that, that, and how this might fit. Like, so this could, you could find that this thing takes off, you could have a ton of demand and you could be, be set with the, the good problem to have, so to speak, of there’s a ton of people that want this. It’s very novel. We have a unique angle on it, ain’t it Great. And so how do we, how do we support that knowing we have limits with our on-campus delivery capability? So I’m, I’m pushing you in a, in a, in a crazy direction perhaps, but tell me why you think about that.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Yeah, I, you know, Joe, I, I would not characterize our university as at the bleeding edge of you know online education. However you know, we do have a lot of online programs. We’ve got, we deliver an online business degree to our Tucson campus. So we have a campus in Washington dc we have a campus in Tucson. For years we’ve had an online master’s degree in social work. We’re launching an online MBA and an online data analytics master. So we have some experience and we think we have enough that we could certainly put a certificate or a minor in, in AI for the user. We could put it online. And we probably are gonna wanna do that in order to number one, advertise what the school is doing uniquely nationally, but also to attract more students into our programs.
Joe Gottlieb:
Seems to make sense. And I imagine you, yeah, you had things going on there, so that should slot very well into that. So now I wanna get into exploring how an ethical degree, ethical AI degree from Catholic University represents both a good mission fit and a unique academic offering nationally.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Yeah. So, you know, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, Joe, we we pride ourselves at Catholic University. As I, as I know, many Catholic colleges and universities do that, you know, we flow out of the tradition that invented the university. You know, you can go back 900, 8, 900 years, and you find that the, the only universities that existed university of Bologna, university of Paris university of Sole Monka, Oxford, these were all Catholic universities. And so we have, we have this tradition that goes all the way back to the Greek philosophers and the Greek teachers and then through the Roman period and Cicero and so on, and then up, up through the beginnings of Christianity that, that we feel is, is an important tradition to try to preserve. You know, that’s, that’s where tragedies and dramas and lit great literature, this is where it was all kind of born, at least in the Western tradition.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Hmm. And we think that’s important for, for a lot of reasons, because it’s illustrative, I think, of so many different modes of human intellectual. And so the ethical AI degree really draws heavily on that because you know, the, the law of non-contradiction, for example you know, the, the, the logic of how do you create one truth or what is one truth mean, what does the difference between existence and essence you know, just these real fundamental ideas in philosophy and logic, you know, those, our students need that. And I would argue that any educated person really needs that. And so to marry that with one of the most exciting tools in the history of technology, you know, generative AI to me is, is, is a really beautiful thing. It’s a, it’s a powerful thing. It’s, it’s much needed based on the challenges that AI faces, but I think it’s a beautiful thing. And so we think this is emblematic of the kinds of innovation and education that our university should be engaged in.
Joe Gottlieb:
That makes a lot of sense. And I think it’s, this is a good place in the conversation to, as you describe that, that original Socratic method, that, that, that the origins of what, of, of what a Catholic education came from. Let’s talk just briefly about that, the history there, because I think that there’s a lot of discussion today in the in pedagogy about shifting from sage on the stage, which has been really the prevalent method for centuries in a lot of institutions, not all to this guide on the side approach, where it means not only the modality of how the relationship between professor and student takes form, but then also the, the critical skills for both parties, that, and the, and the, and the way that they interact with each other, and therefore, the way curricula need to be formatted, et cetera. So this notion of, okay, let’s get critical thinking, less knowledge, just rote knowledge accumulation instead tool set accumulation and exercising that tool set. And like you said before, you know, when you were asking your mom <laugh> question after question, why don’t you go read about it? I got the same thing, by the way. So talk a little bit about that history and, and how you’ve maybe always been at this place, guide on the side.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Yeah, I, I think if, if, if I could opine a little on the evolution of education, please. You know, there was a time in America, and I, I’m an engineer. There was a time when engineers were very, very trusted professionals who, you know, were responsible for almost a, a renaissance complexity of things. They were responsible for safety, they were responsible for design, they were responsible for analysis and just a bunch of stuff. And that was in the early part of the 20th century where we kind of got going in a slightly different direction, was after World War II, when the National Science Foundation was created. And engineers really began to do just pure science, at least in the academy. The, the whole scientific method is inductive. It is one form of intellectual, it’s not typically deductive. It’s inductive, and it, and it, and it doesn’t utilize a mode of intellectual, which I think is really critical with, so there’s, there’s reason or ratio, if you want to use the Latin word, which is discursive and tends to tease things apart into its pieces.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
And then there’s intellectus, which is a, a word that’s gone out of usage, but it’s all about seeing the big picture. It’s all about putting everything together and creating the grand design. And so I fear that this whole sage on a stage kind of really got going when induction became maybe, you know, the preferred mode of knowledge accumulation and knowledge translation. But if you go back to the beginning, if you go back to the Greek schools, you know, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, you go back to the Roman school, Cicero, Marcus Varo and then, you know, the early Christian period, eu, Augustine and so on, you know, it was, it was really the guide on the side. It was discursive, it was dialogical, and Aquinas was sort of the master of this. You know, if you go read the Summa, it’s all dialogical. And so we’ve kind of gotten away, I think, from all the different modes of intellectual that are important to higher education, but now we’re rediscovering it and we’re saying, well, it’s an evolution of education. No, it’s not. It’s a return to the sources. That’s what it is. And we’ve, we kind of know that in our neck of the woods, you know, this is part of our tradition.
Joe Gottlieb:
I love it. Well at the risk of getting into a whole nother topic that we could do a whole nother podcast on so we’ll, we’ll try to keep it brief, but as you say that activating those modes of intellection, presumably would be a very worthy endeavor for any institution. And I think that’s what you just said. And if that’s true, might this ethical AI degree, at least also consider, is how might the future of AI be a useful participant in stimulating those modes of intellectual? Now, that may be beyond the scope of both AI in its current form and even this program, but it certainly sets up a context for what could be possible.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Joe, that’s such a good question. You know, in, in my view another one of the challenges of higher ed is that we’ve become so specialized in the degrees that we offer, that we often inadvertently channel thinking and the way they, they use their intellects into very narrow categories. And so this is why I think it’s so important to try to con always contextualize what you learn in a discipline by bringing in the other disciplines to inform and instruct and assess. And you know, again, this is a very traditional form of education. If you look at the liberal arts you know, the foundation of the liberal arts were grammar, rhetoric and logic. So that is mode of intellectual, mode of speaking, mode of writing. You know, it was, it’s how do I communicate, how do I think, how do I obtain and transmit knowledge?
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
And then you build on top of that the liberal arts, the, the trivium. You build the applications, you build astronomy and physics and music, and, you know, thi this was, this was how everyone learned 6, 7, 8, 900 years ago. Yeah. And we’ve gotten away from that, right? I think it’s important that we help our students understand, look, there’s, there’s, there’s more to life than mathematics. There, there’s more to the human mind than ratio. And, and you need to get in touch with those ways of thinking and asking questions and contextualizing your knowledge than just those modes. And so, yeah, I think, I think this, this program that we’re putting together, I think offers a great way to as an en a point of entry into those alternative modes of election.
Joe Gottlieb:
It’s exciting to hear about. All right, now I’m gonna, I’m gonna try to classify you and to see how you can wriggle out of this box. So this is by design. Is it safe to say that the ideal student for your new ethical AI program is the student that really seeks to leverage their relationship with Catholicism to then appreciate rich possibilities and societal obligations of ethical AI so that they’re better equipped to shape the future of AI for people of all genders, colors, cultures and religions, meaning leveraging that place that you really know well and can enable so that the student can leave and not be stuck in one mode, but be enriched to help all in their respective modes?
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Yeah, certainly. I would say that any of our students who come to us from a classical Catholic education, Catholic high school or whatever would, would very much appreciate this new program in terms of the richness that it opens, it up, opens up both the way, the ways of thinking, but also the ways of helping people of all backgrounds, all ethnicities, et cetera. But I also think that our program would appeal to any student. I mean my gosh, if, if you’re a, if you’re Jewish or Muslim or agnostic, or, you know, wouldn’t you wanna learn about different modes of intellectual and how to use AI in a way that’s ethically sound and logical? I mean, I, I would think those are general values that are applicable to the entire population, not just, not just a Catholic student, but for sure, I think Catholic students will appreciate what we’re doing.
Joe Gottlieb:
Excellent. Alright, let’s bring this to a close. So in summary, Peter, what three takeaways might you offer our listeners on the obligations and opportunities for ethical ai?
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
Yeah. Well, I think as, as I’ve mentioned, Joe, I, I think you know, we want to help the specialist, the technician develop foundation models that aren’t biased or ambiguous, that are, you know, that are, you know, better put together than the models that we have now. Not that we have bad models, it’s just they have challenges and they can be better. I think it’s also one of our goals and one of our obligations is to enable people to apply AI in all the different contexts to make the world, you know, better, kinder, more compassionate, more caring of the human person, all human persons. And then I think finally as I mentioned to you I think there’s gonna be a point in time in the not too distant future where everyone is gonna use AI. I found out earlier this week that my vice president for enrollment management is already using his AI copilot to answer all his emails. And so I asked him, I said, Mark, I said, so how do I know if I’m getting Mark Chii or AI? And he said, well, I review ’em all. He says, they’re just generating the draft. And so I thought to myself, you know, we should all be using this. This is, but we should recognize the shortcomings and the limitations and be mindful of that as, as we’re doing that editorial process.
Joe Gottlieb:
Great summary. Peter, thank you so much for joining me today.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick:
It’s so good to be with you, Joe. Thanks for the, the invite to be on TRANSFORMED. It was my pleasure to contribute.
Joe Gottlieb:
And thanks to our guests for joining us as well. I hope you have a great day and we’ll look forward to hosting you again on the next episode of TRANSFORMED.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yo, stop the music. Hey, listeners, have transformed. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And whether you did or not, I hope that it made you stop and think about the role that you are playing in your organization’s ability to change in the digital era. And if it made you stop and think, perhaps you would be willing to share your thoughts, suggestions, alternative perspectives, or even criticisms related to this or any other episode, I would love to hear from you. So send me an email at Info@Higher.Digital or Joe@Higher.Digital. And if you have friends or colleagues that you think might enjoy it, please share our podcast with them as you, and they can easily find.
