by Marcus Howley ’28 on February 5, 2026
Opinion - Campus
On Dec. 1, 2025, I woke up to see the flyer for a birthday celebration for the generative artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT hosted by the Ryan Business School. It was a strange sight to see an invitation to an AI-themed birthday bash. The party was complete with pizza, cake, prizes, and even coveted Friar Leadership and Immersion Program points. A variety of fun AI-themed activities were available, along with chances to talk to various experts in the field of AI. A fun time for anyone and everyone who believes in a future powered not by man, but by machine.
Since its release on Nov. 30, 2022, ChatGPT, founded by techno billionaire Sam Altman and his company OpenAI, has changed the way people have gone about their daily lives. Many utilize ChatGPT as a glorified search engine, using it to look up simple information that a Google search could have solved. That being said, a Google search would now bring up AI-generated results from Google’s Gemini, and both ChatGPT and Gemini have occasional factual errors. Others, however, utilize it in a way that is more in line with the recent string of commercials released by OpenAI, using it to create workout plans, generate an itinerary for their trip, and give them recipes for meals. This day-to-day utilization of ChatGPT in our lives is a concerning step in how we decide what to do.
The final and most infamous way people have used ChatGPT is to complete assignments and academic tasks, the bane of any teacher trying to give out work over the past three years. Students especially have flocked to various generative AI programs to speed up work and aid them with assignments. This has ranged anywhere from tests to homework. No classroom is free of AI usage.
The business school’s desire to familiarize students with the workings of generative AI programs is understandable. Business students are coming to expect that they will be working in an environment that has some level of AI integration in it. Companies have been scrambling over one another to either develop their own AI systems or to show how they are on the supposed cutting edge of innovation with high levels of AI integration. While the business school’s teaching of AI is unproblematic and even warranted in the current business climate, its endorsement of AI through the birthday celebration is a bad look on the objectives of Providence College.
In its mission statement as a school, PC describes itself as a liberal arts institution with a commitment to a high standard of higher education. Under the section on academic excellence, it states that “its core curriculum addresses key questions of human existence, including life’s meaning and purpose, and stresses the importance of moral and ethical reasoning, aesthetic appreciation, and understanding the natural world, other cultures, and diverse traditions.” The crown jewel of this objective is the Development of Western Civilization course that is mandated for all students to take. The college prides itself on getting students to think about large and philosophical issues as well as deeper issues about our own human lives.
Scroll through any syllabus handed out by a team of professors for DWC, and you will almost certainly find a segment on the usage of AI. While professors have a wide range of views across the spectrum of what is acceptable AI usage, most in the DWC program fall into the camp of an outright ban on its use by students for assignments. The goal of the program is to get students to read and think about complex texts and ideas, to be able to come to their own conclusions, and to become a more well-rounded person and learner because of it. AI robs students of this; by learning about the texts through generated summaries and grasping ideas through artificial explanations, students are unable to complete these goals. The business school’s endorsement of ChatGPT runs against the core values of PC as an institution, creating a bad look for a college that prides itself on the facilitation of higher comprehension and understanding.