Professor Encourages People to Consider the Ethics of AI

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026 -- 8:01 AM

(Royce Podeszwa, Wisconsin Public Radio) Earlier this month, Pope Leo XIV, the first American head of the Roman Catholic Church, issued a more than 42,000-word letter addressing his concerns over the explosion of artificial intelligence.

According to Royce Podeszwa with the Wisconsin Public Radio, in the Pope’s address, he called for stricter government regulation for private AI corporations and greater protections for children from the dangers of the technology.

The Pope’s message comes as public backlash toward AI and its necessary data center construction boom echoes throughout the state and the country. Robin Zebrowski is a professor and department chair of Cognitive Science at Beloit College.

On WPR’s “Wisconsin Today,” she said it’s worth it for people to slow down, take a step back from AI and consider more deeply the ethics around adopting the technology before moving forward.

Zebrowski said that AI ethics have been under debate in academic circles since at least the 1990s. But part of the problem, she said, is that the actual adoption of large language models among the public has created even more ethical dilemmas than anticipated.

“I think the ways it’s being pushed into schools and workplaces is probably the worst aspect of it right now,” Zebrowski said on AI adoption. “That’s the thing I think the Pope gets right in the encyclical, when he says that education has a role to play and we ought not to be necessarily pushing these systems that don’t have access to truth and have no way of checking for truth.”

Zebrowski said studies are showing that students who regularly use large language models, like ChatGPT and Gemini, in their education have lower motivations to seek out answers on their own. Instead, they’re simply asking AI and receiving a quick, sometimes incorrect, response.

“I don’t know how you get academics if nobody’s interested in seeking out answers on their own,” she said. “It seems like the whole nature of expertise is going to go by the wayside.”

While AI adoption continues to push forward at a breakneck pace, public policy surrounding the technology is struggling to keep up. Ben Sobel is an assistant professor of law at the University of  Wisconsin-Madison Law School.

On “Wisconsin Today,” he told listeners that it’s too early to declare there’s any consensus surrounding how to regulate AI adoption. But he added there are pockets where the technology is receiving scrutiny.

So-called “deepfakes,” or non-consensually generated AI-generated images of people, are one area legislators are attempting to regulate. There are a number of laws and court filings in Wisconsin and around the country attempting to prevent that particular use of the technology.

One of the biggest challenges surrounding AI, according to Sobel, is its use of copyrighted materials to generate content. Legally, he said, artists whose work is being used to train AI models are finding it difficult to protect their work.

Copyright law includes a fair use doctrine, which often excuses the use of copyrighted materials for a transformative purpose, traditionally for things like news articles and image searches.

Sobel cited two major court cases, both out of California, that had opposite rulings over whether AI-generated works would dilute the overall value of original works from human artists.

“I would say that there’s still a lot of figuring out to do before we’ve got a real consensus on the matter,” he said. People have been posting their own images online for years, through posts on social media sites like Facebook or X, formerly Twitter.

Sobel said there’s a gap in copyright coverage for people’s own faces when it comes to AI training with online content, but that there are talks of changing those rules through Congress.

“By and large, your rights may be pretty limited,” he said. In his own classroom, Sobel said he bans the use of AI, laptops and electronic devices. That’s in part because of how the technology could affect learning.

Outside of class, Sobel said students might have some uses for AI, but that they should always approach it with a “careful awareness” that the technology can hallucinate and isn’t always correct in its responses.

“I think that learning is something that you can’t delegate,” he said. “I try my best to ensure that students are processing the information, participating in class discussions on their own and really engaged in the moment.”

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.