AI's hardest questions are humanistic. We have been asking them for fifty years.

The world's first human-centered AI curriculum. A decade of work. Downloaded at 4,760 institutions across 198 countries. Leading an emerging movement of humanities-led AI research.

From Aristotle to AI  ·  The questions that give technology meaning
Read the approach See fifty years

AI's most consequential questions are humanistic. Who flourishes, and on whose terms? What do we owe one another? How should knowledge be made, shared, and governed? For fifty years the Integrated Program in Humane Studies has trained students to ask exactly these questions. In 2016 we put them at the center of an AI curriculum — the first program in the world to do so.

Schmidt Sciences OpenAI NIST Forbes NPR UNESCO Carleton Smith Oxford Witt Lab NOTRE DAMETECH ETHICS LAB IBM Meta MLA Weill CornellMEDICINE-QATAR YALECITY CENTER Berklee COLUMBIA ADHO THE HELIXCENTER
01 / Driver
Humanistic inquiry as the driver
Meaning, purpose, justice, truth, and beauty are the questions AI must answer to. IPHS treats them as primary, not peripheral.
Founded 1975
02 / Foundation
A decade-plus foundation, not a pivot
First human-centered AI curriculum, 2016. 197 student research projects. Faculty who built for the LLM era before it arrived.
10 years · 197 projects
03 / Reach
Global reach from a liberal-arts foundation
Student research downloaded by institutions worldwide; faculty featured at OpenAI Forum, UNESCO MONDIACULT, Forbes, and NPR.
~100K downloads · 198 countries
04 / Movement
Leading an emerging movement
Schmidt HAVI cohort. NIST CAISI Principal Investigators. A growing cohort of NEH- and Mellon-funded humanistic-AI initiatives is taking shape.
1 of 23 worldwide (Schmidt HAVI)
05 / Trajectory
Anticipating trajectories, not reacting to releases
Faculty publish on AI's trajectory so the curriculum stays ahead of the technology, not behind it.
ICML 2024 oral · top 2%
06 / Commons
Public-interest, open-source, community-governed
SentimentArcs is open. The HAVI archival work is community-governed. Student research is freely downloaded worldwide.
Open-source by default
Built in a small village in Ohio. Read in more countries than the UN has members.
50
Years of humane studies
10
Years of human-centered AI
~100K
Research downloads worldwide
198
Countries reached

We are not alone

Humanities-led AI is growing fast. Major funders — Schmidt Sciences, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation — are building portfolios that ask humanists, ethicists, and cultural scholars to lead, not advise. IPHS is part of a cohort that includes:

Schmidt Sciences HAVI NIST CAISI NEH Mellon Foundation MLA Notre Dame Tech Ethics Lab The Helix Center ADHO Oxford Witt Lab UNESCO MONDIACULT
Read about the movement
‘The human-centered AI curriculum at Kenyon encompassed the true essence of a liberal arts education: using a wide range of academic disciplines to discuss world-changing contemporary issues.’
Raul Romero, Class of 2022
Schmidt Sciences NIST OpenAI NPR Forbes UNESCO

Four ways to engage

Different paths in for different readers.
Grant collaborators
Read the approach — thesis, exemplars, leadership case.
Peer institutions
See the movement — co-actors, partnership opportunities.
Students & families
Walk the timeline — from 1975 to where AI work is now.
Supporters
Fund humanistic AI — endowed, project, or Kenyon portal.

Questions about partnerships, speaking, or grants

elkinsk@kenyon.edu