Guest Contributor: AI and Our Duty of Care
by Eric Hudson
In a recent letter to his community, the President of the University of Chicago Paul Alivisatos wrote that the university has a “duty of care” to its students and employees when it comes to artificial intelligence: ”to ensure that the education offered to you is responsive to these technological developments by teaching you how to think with machines, how to think without them, and how to think about them.”
Sunrise outside the Jan Koum Campus of Milken Community School
It is this duty of care that Milken has also put at the center of its approach to generative AI. The school knows that AI is affecting its students’ present and their futures, and it knows that educators are often well-positioned to engage students in complex topics. They know that we do not shy away from difficult conversations but instead carefully consider how we want to approach them and then confront them head-on. Milken educators constantly speak about and name values in tension, which makes them better equipped to explore these tensions with students.
Generative AI is both a technology and a current event. Yes, it can be a powerful tool, but it is also a disruptive force changing society, politics, and industry; as such, it is changing our children’s futures. In education, it has been a catalyst for debate about how we learn, how we relate to each other, and what is important for students to learn.
““The longstanding goals we all have for young people—critical thinking, discernment, ethical and empathetic engagement with the world, creativity, purpose—are more important in an AI world, not less.””
Milken’s strengths are its community and its sense of purpose, both of which position it well for this work. In deciding to engage with AI, the school has done more than just invest in technology; it has invested in its people and their mission for “our students to surpass us.”. When I visited Milken to speak with faculty, I was struck by their passion for supporting their students in pursuit of academic excellence. When I continued working with a cohort of Milken teachers to design AI-informed learning experiences, I was inspired by their ability to use their expertise and knowledge of their students to make interesting, learning-centered choices about AI applications and about how they wrestled with the questions and challenges that AI presented in their lives and in their classrooms. Most impressive to me is how this work continues, led by Milken educators themselves. They are exploring AI and sharing what they learn, bringing both enthusiasm and healthy skepticism to the work. All the while, Milken educators are engaging with the challenging questions surrounding ethics, responsibility, and accountability.
We know two important facts about young people and AI: 1) many of them are frequent, heavy users and 2) many more of them have strong and often conflicting feelings about AI, and they are eager for adults, especially parents and teachers, to listen. They want to know how AI affects their brains, their relationships, and their futures. They would like a seat at the table when it comes to how schools set AI policy. We cannot have these conversations without open, trusting relationships and deep understanding of AI. Milken’s ongoing commitment to open exploration and capacity-building are the right strategies for helping students think about AI, just as they engage in work around productive discourse.
The longstanding goals we all have for young people—critical thinking, discernment, ethical and empathetic engagement with the world, creativity, purpose—are more important in an AI world, not less. Milken’s current and future work is to determine how learning with and about AI can be done in service of those goals. This is human work: community engagement, professional development, strategic planning, and responsive approaches to change. There is no one policy, no one initiative, no one decision that will successfully address AI’s impact on a school; rather, it is the accumulation of intentional, human-centered decisions over time that ensure we are leading on AI, not letting it lead us.
About the Author
Eric Hudson served as Milken’s AI consultant during the 2025–26 school year. He is a facilitator and strategic advisor who supports schools in making sense of what’s changing in education. He specializes in learner centered assessment, human centered leadership, and strategic program design.
