Knowers Who Seek the Truth: Alum Taylor Black Talks AI Ethics

With the rise of artificial intelligence, the topic is the center of conversations, new initiatives, and innovative ways of thinking; from the smallest startup company to conversations between friends, and even within the Catholic Church.

Hosting a lecture in January 2026, the Catholic Studies program welcomed Gonzaga alum Taylor Black ('07), director of AI & Venture Ecosystems at Microsoft and founding director of a new interdisciplinary institute on artificial intelligence and emerging technologies at The Catholic University of America.

His talk, titled "Foundations of AI Ethics," drew on the work of Canadian Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan to argue that the most important questions about AI are not technical, but human. "As builders, we're participating in divine co-creation," Black shared with the lecture hall. "Every design choice we make has a moral impact."

For students, Black didn't sugarcoat it. He shared a story of a man named Robert Williams. Williams was wrongfully arrested and put behind bars for 30 hours as victim of an AI algorithm mistake. The technology was not able to decipher Williams from another Black man. His family had to watch him be arrested for a crime he did not commit.

"AI can generate your paper," he said. "It cannot grasp whether the paper is true."

He then introduced a framework he has been developing: AI as a mirror compared to AI as a window. A mirror reflects existing patterns back to the user, confirming assumptions and preferences. A window opens onto something brand new.

"AI lacks this desire," he said. "It processes but does not wonder. That is not a criticism. It is a clarification.”

He presented the Catholic intellectual tradition as “the development of judgement, the orientation of truth, and the capacity to recognize what Philosopher Lonergan called the virtually unconditioned. It requires human encounter, human friction and human time.”  

Using introspective reflection as a main source of connection in his lecture, Black told lecture attendants to phrase AI usage to themselves as a moral question, rather than compass.  

"A good way of thinking about it is: Is this giving me the answer, or is it making me better at getting answers?" Using the human mind and heart will allow artificial intelligence users to use their ethical values to lead the way, rather than the AI system at hand.  

“Deep within us all, emergent when the noise of other appetites is stilled, there is a drive to know, to understand, to see why, to discover. It can absorb a person,” Black shared, referencing Lonergan.

"The ethical task is neither to fear AI nor to worship it," he continued. "To remain, in all of our technological sophistication, knowers who seek truth and persons who can love."