These findings, however, do not contradict each other. Read together, they show that the public is doing exactly what a thoughtful public should do: recognizing a genuine opportunity and insisting that it be pursued responsibly. People see the AI promise and the AI peril.

Students, workers, patients, and voters are already using AI daily. The most recent data from Pew Research Center show that approximately 70% of adults are using various AI tools. Yet very few people have been taught how to evaluate what an AI application tells them: how to verify a citation, how to spot a fabrication, how to recognize bias, how to use AI as a helpful assistant and not a dangerous crutch.

This is a problem our educational institutions are uniquely positioned to solve. It is also a problem higher education could botch — either by banning tools their graduates will encounter on day one of the job, or by allowing students to quietly outsource their thinking to a machine no one has trained them to question. Neither posture is worthy of our colleges and universities. And neither reflects what the public is actually asking for.

The word “literacy” matters. To be literate in AI is not merely knowing how to type a good prompt. It is =knowing when to trust an output, when to verify it, and when to reject it. It is knowing what an AI tool is and, just as importantly, what it is not. It is understanding the moral ramifications of the choices we make with these systems and to act in harmony with what is genuinely good for us as human beings.

That is judgment. And judgment is not an automatic skill that we can download. It is a formed disposition. You cannot cultivate it by adding a one-credit prompt-engineering elective to a general education curriculum in our colleges and universities. You cultivate it with the capacities that matter: the rigorous pursuit of, defense of, and application of truth, beauty, and goodness across all aspects of the educational experience. It is a coherent and coordinated moral formation.

That means integrating AI into coursework thoughtfully, while protecting and strengthening the capacities AI cannot provide: the difficult and often painful stretching and struggling of learning that is essential to human maturity and a well-lived life. AI should be used to sharpen the learning journey of ourselves and our students. It must not serve as a cheap substitute for it.

At Cornerstone University, we believe this is exactly one of the key foci of Christian higher education. Our new AI certificate and dedicated AI courses in the Cornerstone core and honors curriculum ensure that our students engage AI directly, competently, and confidently. Our recently convened AI advisory board of distinguished academic and industry experts will help us do so with discipline and discernment.

But our approach to AI education begins deeper. It begins with a fundamental understanding of the human person: created in the image of God, endowed with genuine agency, and responsible for the choices he or she makes with the tools placed into his or her hands. Human dignity does not rest on functional prowess or processing speed. If it did, machines would already have surpassed us. That conviction allows for the embrace of useful technologies as means and not ends. 

THE SPIRITUAL SICKNESS BEHIND TRUMP’S BLASPHEMOUS AI JESUS POST

America will not lead the age of AI through computing power alone. It will need people capable of directing that power wisely — citizens, workers, and leaders who can use these tools while staying thoughtful, responsible, and fully human in the process. The universities that matter most a decade from now will be those that treated AI literacy as moral and civic formation, not merely a technical add-on.

Cornerstone intends to be one of them.

Gerson Moreno-Riano is president of Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.