Dignity · Embodiment · Love · Transcendence · Agency
Five questions for a technology that should serve the person
DELTA is a Christian-inspired framework, open to anyone, for asking whether a use of AI actually serves human flourishing. Notre Dame's Institute for Ethics and the Common Good built it from more than 200 conversations with faith leaders, educators, and technologists.
The framework we build inside
Five principles, expanded
Dignity
Every child is made in the image of God. No analysis, score, or efficiency can be allowed to reduce a student to a data point. The pilot never identifies an individual child in Phase I.
Embodiment
Learning happens in a room, in a body, in real time. Classroom audio is transcribed on-premises, inside the school firewall, and never leaves the building.
Love
To know a student is to attend to them, especially the quiet one at the back. The tool exists to help a teacher notice whose voice isn't being heard, which is what love in a classroom actually looks like.
Transcendence
Catholic education points beyond itself, to the God who made every student and calls each by name. Technology serves that end or it has no place here.
Agency
The teacher decides; the tool only watches, analyzes, and reports. AI does not teach, and it never overrides the judgment of the adult who knows the child.
The Church's own teaching
Pope Leo XIV's Magnifica Humanitas
The 2026 encyclical gave us the same conviction in a different register: technology is never neutral, and AI must be put in service of human dignity rather than allowed to erode it. Every technical decision behind our pilot traces back to that conviction.
"We didn't invent our own AI ethics from scratch. We're building inside DELTA's framework and inside the Church's own teaching, which is exactly why this site carries both marks."
St. Theresa project team