Launching a New University-Wide Initiative on Artificial Intelligence

Dear Members of the Georgetown Community,

I am writing to announce a new university-wide initiative to create a framework for the university’s practices regarding the use and nonuse of artificial intelligence (AI) in teaching, research, and other mission activities.

Given AI’s ubiquity and rapidly evolving capabilities, Georgetown’s commitment to our Jesuit, Catholic values requires us to engage in thoughtful reflection on how best to align our practices with our deepest principles. Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, offers a helpful guide as we discern how to fulfill our mission in the presence of this powerful new tool. This historic document urges all people of good will – but especially educational institutions – to work to ensure that any use of AI respects human dignity and preserves the freedom of moral judgment. The AI Initiative will be just one way in which Georgetown responds to Pope Leo’s call.

I have asked Bob Groves to coordinate this effort, working with the Faculty Senate, to form a Steering Committee of senior faculty and other subject-matter experts. The initiative will create two primary institutional deliverables during this academic year:

• The Georgetown Principles of AI Use: A consolidated set of core values and higher-order principles informed by our Jesuit values to guide AI-use decisions in teaching, research, service, and administration, to be completed by the end of the Fall 2026 semester.
  
  
• AI Practical Guidance: A more operational framework mapping AI relevance to the principles, to be completed by the end of the Spring 2027 semester. As a part of this process, and to provide greater clarity for our students, department and program faculty will engage in discussions about how best to implement the principles at the level of individual programs and courses.

To ensure a broad range of perspectives informs its thinking, the Steering Committee will consult widely through listening sessions and focus groups with students, staff, faculty, and administrators across the university. I will announce the composition of the Steering Committee in the coming days. In keeping with the principle of subsidiarity, the framework will establish central institutional guardrails while ensuring individual schools and teaching units maintain the flexibility necessary to guide their distinctive methodological commitments.

AI Fellows

In addition to launching the Steering Committee, the university will create a pilot program of AI Fellows: students who will receive training in AI to assist faculty in altering their courses for the context of AI. Faculty, if you’re interested in receiving the assistance of an AI Fellow, please complete a short application by September 28, 2026. Students, if you’d like to be an AI Fellow, please complete a short application by September 28, 2026. During this pilot phase, the Fellows’ availability will be limited, but we will aim to increase their numbers as we develop a clearer sense of faculty needs.

Additional Opportunities

Over the coming months, we will also be exploring the creation of spaces across the university that will be free of all internet-enabled technologies. The goal will be to provide students and faculty with an environment for distraction-free production of written or other materials. Stay tuned for more information on this effort.

Finally, we want everyone to know about the many events, dialogues, debates, convenings, and seminars on AI that will take place over the academic year and have created a website to keep everyone informed.

As a student-centered research university in the Jesuit, Catholic tradition, Georgetown will be a leader for higher education in creating a human-centered response to the challenges and opportunities posed by AI. Articulating these principles and practical guidance is a first step in that direction. But like the technology itself, our response needs to be both adaptive and continuous. Thank you in advance for your thoughtful participation in this important effort.

Respectfully,

Eduardo M. Peñalver
President