Join us for a dynamic evening dialogue designed to foster open-mindedness, a sense of community, and actionable insights for artists, designers and educators. AI + Ethics: Exploring Critical Agency brings together experts from diverse fields including military ethics, emerging technologies, journalism, speculative fiction and creative storytelling to explore the complex ethical challenges posed by artificial intelligence (AI). Panelists will address pressing questions about AI’s impact on art, design, employment and society in a discussion moderated by Zach Savich, Professor and Division Chair of Liberal Arts, Cleveland Institute of Art. Panelists include:

• David Foster | Associate Professor, School of Media and Journalism, Kent State University
• Shannon E. French | Inamori Professor of Ethics, Case Western Reserve University
• Kevin Mowrer ’80 | Principal Mowrer MetaStory, CEO Meaningful Fun
• Ashlei Watson | Director of Academic Planning, College for Creative Studies

Attendees are invited to reflect critically on the evolving role of AI and the ethical frameworks that guide its use. The conversation will address urgent concerns from the student community, highlighting both risks and opportunities, while emphasizing empowerment, agency and hope.

“AI + Ethics” will take place at 6pm Thursday, December 4 in CIA’s Peter B. Lewis Theater. The event will be followed by a reception. This event is free and open to the public.

Registration is encouraged by Wednesday, November 26. Register here. 

Related Programming

To accompany this lecture, the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque has programmed Moral Machines, Synthetic Souls; a film series that looks at how cinema tackles the question of technological ethics through its stories and images as artificial intelligence, automation, and digital surveillance shape our lives. This series deals with the dilemmas of creation and control, the boundaries between human and machine, and the moral consequences of innovation.

Moral Machines, Synthetic Souls features four films that screen Friday, November 7; Saturday, November 22; Saturday, November 29; and Thursday, December 4 in CIA’s Peter B. Lewis Theater.

Speaker Bios

Zach Savich is the Chair of Liberal Arts and a Professor at CIA. His latest books are the poetry collection Momently (2024) and the critical memoir for performance A Field of Telephones (2025).

David Foster is an Associate Professor of multimedia and photojournalism at Kent State University’s School of Media and Journalism. David holds a master’s degree in journalism education as well as an undergraduate degree in photojournalism. In the classroom, he explores AI image generation and the intersection of creativity and ethics.

Shannon E. French is the Inamori Professor in Ethics, Director of the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence, and a tenured full professor in the Philosophy Department at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, Ohio with a secondary appointment in the School of Law. Professor French received her BA from Trinity University (San Antonio, Texas) in 1990 and her PhD in philosophy from Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island) in 1997. Prior to starting at CWRU in 2008, she taught for eleven years as a tenured associate professor of philosophy at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and served as associate chair of the Department of Leadership, Ethics, and Law. She founded the first master’s degree program in Military Ethics in the US at CWRU, works with the US and allied military, service academies, and chaplain corps around the world, and held the General Hugh Shelton Distinguished Visiting Chair in Ethics at the Command and General Staff College Foundation for seven years. Her core areas of research are military ethics – especially as it relates to conduct of war, ethical leadership, command climate, sacrifice and responsibility, warrior transitions, ethical responses to terrorism, and the future of warfare – and ethical issues in emerging technology, including artificial intelligence. She is the author of many scholarly publications, editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Ethical Leadership, an associate editor for the Journal of Military Ethics, on several other editorial boards, and is active in the European Chapter of the International Society for Military Ethics (Euro-ISME). She is a Senior Research Fellow for the Simons Center for Ethical Leadership and Interagency Cooperation, an ELSI (Ethical, Legal, and Societal Impact) consultant for the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) and the RAND Corporation, and a member of the ethics board for ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). She serves as the ELSI lead or a primary researcher on major grant projects funded by DARPA, ONR, and other organizations.

Kevin Mowrer is a CIA alum with over 40 years of entertainment development and product creation experience. Kevin is considered the entertainment industry’s “franchise story doctor”. His breakthrough approach to developing broad entertainment franchises has been applied to IP including Batman, Men in Black, Jurassic Park, Transformers, LEGO, DC Comics, How to Train Your Dragon, Trolls, The Croods, Lord of the Rings Online, and many others. Presently, he continues this work as a consultant through Mowrer MetaStory.

He has received multiple Emmy Awards for his work in kids and all-family entertainment and holds over 25 patents in product and AI. In 2024 he published his first novel, Vyctor, with a second and third due to arrive in 2026. Kevin is also CEO of Meaningful Fun, a tech-enabled edu-gaming company.

Ashlei Watson currently serves as the Director of Academic Planning at College for Creative Studies in Detroit. In that position, she develops and implements continuous improvement initiatives for the academic division, researches and presents on industry trends, assists with planning and decision-making, and manages accreditation efforts.

For the last five years, Watson has worked with Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute Senior Project Scientist Jill Fain Lehman and Laboratory for Cybernetics Director Paul Pangaro to coauthor the speculative fiction series, Private I, which explores possible futures with individualized AI.

Watson’s current research focus relates to the societal impacts of evolving technologies and accelerating change. She is particularly engaged with higher education’s role in preparing students for possible futures through rethinking needed durable skills to harness and collaborate with technology.