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As artificial intelligence reshapes classrooms, workplaces, and daily life, 17c������� faculty are helping students ask deeper questions: What does it mean to be human? What practices form wisdom? And how might Christians respond faithfully to a powerful new technology? Ahead of 17c�������’s Wisdom in the Age of AI conference in October 2026, the Q&A below draws from a live faculty conversation after a showing of the documentary The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist on education, community, responsibility, and hope. 

How would you explain the difference between thinking deeply and knowing a lot? 

Katie Good: I’m thinking a lot more about the struggle of learning and cognition. Something that’s been observed about AI is that it’s holding up this mirror to our humanity, and it’s clarifying things for us. It’s prompting us to see and value things about our humanity—not just our cognition and our intelligence, but what’s larger than that about being human. 

From a faculty perspective, we’re coming to value things like the struggle of writing. It’s no longer about handing in a product because, guess what, an AI can hand in a great essay for you. So instead, how do we shape the classroom to be a place of struggle where we struggle together to discover our voice, to discover a new idea, to put voices from scholarship, literature, and film into dialogue with each other? That’s the kind of challenge I’m embracing. I’m finding it really fruitful. I’m finding students want to do that. In some ways, I’m an apocalyptimist, I suppose, because I do see a silver lining. I didn’t expect to. Even a year ago, I was feeling more gloomy about what AI was doing to education, which is my corner of work. But now I’m finding new opportunities to reframe things in a way that’s energizing, and it feels like a space of discovery. 

Philip Johnson: Pedagogically, in terms of the science of teaching, there’s an element to this where I tell my students to use AI for certain things, but I also tell them specifically what not to use it on. I want them to struggle on some of these things. I don’t want them to just regurgitate an answer. And the irony is that a classical education—with some application, but also theory from multiple disciplines—is actually maybe counter to how an AI works. I think that’s extremely important. 

The other thing I would say was missing, in my opinion, from the film was the element of our mission statement around being Christ’s agents of renewal. That is so important. I find that when I go back to that, I actually become far more optimistic. If we’re equipping our students to live out that part of the mission, that’s something AI cannot do. AI is not sentient. And that, I think, is far more important and relevant in a world where AI is becoming increasingly dominant. 

Derek Schuurman: Thinking deeply is only one part of our mission statement. It’s also about acting justly and living wholeheartedly. To reduce humanity to just thinking things—to brains on a stick—is a very reductionistic view of what humanity is. That’s part of why I appreciated the ways the film gestured toward life as being more than cognition. Part of Christian education, and part of what we do at 17c�������, is not just teaching people how to think, but forming whole persons. 

But it’s also important that we know how to think, which is why we need to make sure we don’t completely offload our cognitive abilities to a machine. A lot of tech insiders talk about making life frictionless through apps and automation. But in some ways, an education is an exercise in friction-maxing—being able to do things on our own so that we can develop the muscles we need in order to think deeply without offloading that work to a machine. Developing both knowledge and virtue requires practice. 

What gives you hope as AI continues to change the world around us? 

Johnson: My hope doesn’t come from anything we saw on the screen in this movie. My hope comes from the truth that we study and an event that happened a couple of thousand years ago. 

More in the day-to-day, my hope also comes from my students—seeing how they are growing and developing and embracing both sides of this argument and thinking critically about it. I have three kids who are 10, 12, and 14, and I get hope from seeing how they and their friends grow and engage inside and outside of the world of technology. So I have hope because of that too.  

But at the end of the day, my hope comes from what we celebrate on Friday and Sunday. I think it’s fitting this conversation happened during Holy Week, because that’s where the ultimate hope comes from. 

Good: I would echo Philip. I’m finding hope and consolation in these turbulent times in my faith, in my students, and in my kids. And in the movie, in the babies. That was such a key ingredient. The filmmaker, who in some ways stands in for all of us, begins from a place of not knowing what AI is. Then we learn about it, experience fear, hear hopeful narratives, consider the possibilities, and maybe land somewhere in the middle. But the question of new life is essential to the film. 

To echo the theme of Holy Week, new life is also central to the spiritual journey we are on. That’s where I draw my hope too. It’s such a privilege and blessing to work with students every day because we see in them the promise of the future—the new ideas, the energy, and their optimism. We also renew our responsibility to care for the earth and care for each other every day we meet students in the classroom. We are handing over skills, and in some ways handing society over to them, while also placing our trust in them to steward what comes next. I feel profound hope when I interact with students every day. 

Schuurman: There’s a contemporary testimony in the Christian Reformed tradition titled Our World Belongs to God. It opens by stating “As followers of Jesus Christ, living in this world—which some seek to control, and others view with despair—we declare with joy and trust: Our world belongs to God!.” That’s where I ultimately place my hope. At the same time, God has also given us responsibility, and there can be consequences if we make poor decisions, so we need to remember that, too. 

Another line I talk about with my students comes from Creation Regained, where Al Wolters writes that there is nothing in creation that is either the villain or the savior. Looking at AI as either a savior or a villain misses the point of the larger biblical story, in which the ultimate problem is sin and the only Savior is Jesus Christ. Working within that biblical story is where we find the problem, the remedy, along with our calling and responsibility. That is where my ultimate hope lies. 

What might faithful action look like for Christians seeking to be agents of renewal in an AI-shaped world? 

Schuurman: I do think there is a place for regulation. As I mentioned, if we make poor decisions with powerful technologies, there can be large consequences. I’m part of a group called AI&Faith, which is an interfaith group of Muslims, Jews, Christians and others working together to find common cause and bring our voice to the public square for the common good. As individuals, we can also lobby people in positions of influence and discern carefully about the AI products we choose to use. 

I think the European Union has offered a helpful initial model for regulation. It distinguishes between lower-risk AI that needs less oversight, moderate-risk AI that should be tested before broad release, and high-risk uses that should not be permitted at all. We already regulate cars, food, and medicine. It’a prudent and responsible to put guardrails and legislation in place around AI, especially when companies are often driven by profit incentives that can send us in places we do not want to go. 

Johnson: I’d answer at both a micro level and a macro level. At the micro level, I challenge my students to think about how we build community, because community is one of the biggest things at risk with the increasing prevalence of technology. In many ways, technology is both deeply empowering for connection and deeply isolating. That tension is something worth exploring seriously, especially at the college-student level. 

At the macro level, my concern is less about the AI tools everyone here knows about and more about how these can manifest as geopolitical threats. If those geopolitical pressures continue to exist, then profit motives alone will not determine what happens. The harder question is how to motivate people and nations to work toward a common-good approach. This movie has me curious whether there are ways to re-incentivize market dynamics to tap into those structures without letting everything become purely profit-driven. Regulation matters, but it will often lag behind. That’s why I think the broader challenge is how to move everyone toward a more responsible vision of the common good, preferably through some market mechanism. 

Good: I want to take something from both of those perspectives. I agree on regulation, I agree on the essential role of community, and I agree that we’re still grappling with the challenge of social media. In fact, I saw profound parallels between this film and The Social Dilemma. Both documentaries point to risky technologies that are also clearly valuable enough to prompt mass global adoption. That makes this a problem at scale. 

Both films also end with an appeal for viewers to get involved. I appreciate that, but I also feel some fatigue and concern because our systems of change move slowly. We have seen some people-driven movements, including state-level school policies on cell phone use, but in general the legislative system lags far behind Silicon Valley. What I take from this documentary is a renewed sense of urgency around accelerating these conversations while recognizing that we are already living in a fragmented information environment. That fragmentation makes it harder to galvanize public support, and it is one of the central challenges we still need to face. 

What would you say to students trying to live faithfully in light of AI? 

Schuurman: A week or two ago, I had my students take part in a technology fast. These are computer science students who are immersed in screens much of the time. One of the countermeasures we can retrieve in an age when technology is becoming more powerful and more ubiquitous is the ancient disciplines of the Christian faith: Sabbath, devotions, prayer, and service to others. These practices re-center our hearts and help equip us to face the challenges of our context, especially in this age of AI. 

Johnson: Reiterating some earlier comments, I would say all of that, but within a community. Technology may be one of the most empowering forces for connection, but also one of the most isolating realities many students face. So I would encourage students to think about these questions within community. And I love the question, “Where does your hope come from?” because that is the ultimate issue when we’re talking about disruptive things like this. It all comes back to where your hope lies. 

Good: Maybe what concerns me most about AI in the everyday sense—in how students are using it—is not so much the academic side. It’s the companionship aspect. I would encourage students to resist the allure of an AI companion or friend. I love the phrase “imperfect human counsel,” which Matthew Milliner of Wheaton College uses in a recent essay. Instead of turning to the slick counsel AI can give—whether as a spiritual director or a friend—we should turn toward the imperfect human counsel of the people God has placed in our lives. 

Taken together, the conversation offers a distinctly 17c������� response to artificial intelligence—one that neither panics nor romanticizes, but instead asks how education, Christian practice, community, and public responsibility can form people of wisdom. As the university looks ahead to the Wisdom in the Age of AI Conference in October 2026, these reflections point to the kind of thoughtful, faithful leadership 17c������� professors are bringing to one of the defining questions of this moment.