A new addition to Bennington College’s academic offerings that many may not be aware of is the new Bennington Center for Artificial Intelligence (BCAI), which was created last fall and has begun hosting events for the Bennington College community and beyond. Although it draws from STEM, the center is far from limited to the realm of computer science, instead focusing on the presence of AI across professional and academic fields, as well as the intersection of technology with sociocultural norms and ethics. The program is founded and maintained using no funding from the college.
The question many students have, myself included, is how BCAI plans to address the use of AI ethically, beneficially, and in a way that is relevant to the needs of Bennington students. The global boom of AI in recent years has had a variety of impacts: easily accessible misinformation, expedited environmental harm, optimization and advancements across STEM, job insecurity, and several other massive shifts across tech, business, and more. It’s a hot-button issue for many of us at this college, and not something to be taken lightly.
To learn more, I sat down with the board’s student representative, Andy Farrell (they/them), whose focus on AI, philosophy, and consciousness in their Plan has prepared them to be a liaison between the student body and the world of AI research. They described BCAI as a much-needed addition to Bennington academics, as the presence of AI in the current and future workforce is highly consequential to nearly every field, regardless of whether we as individuals wish to utilize it. Farrell described a key part of the center’s mission as “help[ing] empower students to speak from an educated standpoint on the issue” and “make actionable change.”
BCAI is “not here to sell you on AI,” as they state on their website. Rather, their goal is to prime students for “creative and responsible use” by critically examining AI’s technical function and sociocultural implications. While the center is still in its very early stages, they have several initiatives beginning to be realized this semester, many of which are not just open to Bennington students, but also faculty, staff, and the local community overall.
Their “Fireside Chat” series, such as the recent conversation about AI with Bennington alumni Beth Kanter and Adnan Iftekhar, seeks to bolster student engagement and thoughtful conversation on usage. These also offer an opportunity to speak with the director, Darcy Otto, a Bennington professor who merges computer science with philosophy. The speaker series involves more formal presentations by academic and professional experts in AI. Their next event on April 9th, 2026 is titled “Bias, Values, and Verification in AI” and features Olive Franzese-McLaughlin, PhD, whose work on cryptographic verification seeks to address the issue of fairness, responsibility, privacy, and more in AI models.
Beyond the spring ‘26 term, they have several other plans for outreach. Workshops targeting faculty, Bennington students, and beyond will be rolled out. Over the past Field Work Term, they hosted their first workshop for Bennington Faculty which was an overview of several dimensions of AI from how it works to its presence in the classroom. Possible events this summer will include programming for undergraduate students from Bennington and beyond to examine AI through a more academic lens. Beyond that, BCAI also plans on adding opportunities to educate high school students interested in AI practices.
These initiatives and more will be realized by the BCAI board that Farrell sits on alongside faculty across Society, Culture, and Thought (SCT), music, visual and performing arts, and STEM, as well as library staff. The faculty on the board help ensure that the interests of various disciplines at Bennington are maintained. Another goal of BCAI is to have more professors address AI in their courses, using whatever methods or perspectives they feel are most applicable. Specific courses that analyze AI are forthcoming, and will be taught by Darcy Otto in computer science. They will include an introductory course to AI, an advanced course on AI and Algorithms, and a combined computer science and philosophy course called AI and Ethics.
For those who want to learn more about the goals and standards of the AI center, more information is available on their website, with a social media account forthcoming. As BCAI continues to roll out programming, I look forward to further integration across disciplines while maintaining the spirit of critical inquiry.
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