The importance of ethics as a part of teaching at Comillas

The Comillas ICADE Chair in Economic and Business Ethics successfully held a new Ethics Meeting for Lecturers, now in its ninth year. On this occasion, the main theme was the ethical dimensions of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which was discussed by Francesc Torralba, lecturer in Ethics at Ramón Llull University in Barcelona; William Hasselberger, co-president of the Strategic Alliance of Catholic Research Universities (SACRU) and Raúl González Fabre, lecturer at Comillas.

Torralba focused his talk on spiritual intelligence and questioned whether AI is intelligent. "What are we talking about when we talk about intelligence?" he asked. "I am reluctant to use artificial intelligence as a term," he continued, and defined human intelligence as "incarnated intelligence, installed in a body, which configures an intelligence that is different from an intelligence where there is no body and all that this represents".

For their part, Hasselberg and González Fabre debated in a discussion on "AI, agency and the human person", and the day ended with a round table on the challenges of generative education with the participation of Javier Nó, president of the "Teaching, learning and programmes" Commission of UNIJES; Reyes Calderón, lecturer at Comillas; José Manuel de la Chica, CTO of Banco de Santander, and Javier Camacho, of the European University.

"Ethics is one of the most difficult subjects to teach; it is very difficult for lecturers to implement in their subjects, which is why a conference like this one helps reflection and implementation, and to take a step forward," said the Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration (Comillas ICADE), Teresa Corzo. Javier Cía, co-president of the UNIJES Identity and Mission Commission, also stated that "within the identity and mission, the presence of ethics was important, as it is one of the distinctive aspects of our universities", and added that "the presence of ethics in teaching is more of a transversal dimension, not just a subject that has certain credits".