What is a human being? One of the convictions in the seedbed of the Understory is that every age eventually reveals an answer to this question either explicitly or implicitly. This sometimes surfaces in philosophical debate. Other times, it is embedded in education. Or in politics or public policy. Or in marketing and economics.
And sometimes it appears in the technologies we build. Artificial intelligence has made that timeless question unavoidable. Much of today’s conversation about AI revolves around safety, regulation, bias, and transparency—understandably, we want to focus on the guardrails. But they all assume a prior question, often left unasked: What exactly are we trying to protect?
At the 2026 Understory Festival, Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good convened a conversation worthy of the question. Moderated by Adam Kronk, three panelists led the discussion to explore not merely what AI is becoming but what we are.
