Developing Ethical Decision-Making in the Age of AI
Developing Ethical Decision-Making in the Age of AI
Implementation Possibilities in the Field of Religious Education
Ingrid Sfet1
1Babeș-Bolyai University, Ecumene Doctoral School, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
While GenAI offers opportunities, it also brings risks and ethical challenges that affect students’ ethical decision-making and moral reasoning. Religious education should lay the foundation for ethical and critical thinking in the context of GenAI. The main objective of this study is to examine how this could be achieved, with a focus on the GenAI ethical challenges through the lens of the learning characteristics of generations Z and Alpha. Exhaustive research reveals that gamification and experiential learning can be useful for students if tailored to their needs, which can help create a foundation for critical thinking and ethical decision-making.
There is a common opinion that experiential learning and gamification could have a great impact. Experience is a tool that serves not only as entertainment, but motivation for student activity and more. Experience alone is not sufficient for learning, but it is necessary for the insights gained through experience to be incorporated into long-term memory. This means a structured transformation of experience into knowledge. Kolb’s cycle shows that learning is not passive: it is a dynamic loop of experience, reflection, conceptualization, and experimentation. What is crucial here is the role of reflection. Without reflection, experience risks remaining trivial. This model is particularly powerful when applied to ethical challenges, because reflection is what transforms experience into long-term values and convictions.
At the core of religious education in the age of AI the ethical decision-making process must be considered. In our digitalised society, the ability to form responsible moral convictions and to engage in ethical decision-making is no longer optional, but essential. In religious education, this is particularly vital: the task is not to hand over prefabricated moral rules, but to guide students towards forming convictions that they can own, represent, and live out with integrity. At the heart of this lies a process: the process of ethical decision-making. It is not a rigid formula, but a dynamic, interactive journey, where steps can be revisited, reinforced, or complemented.
Considering Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle and the process of ethical decision-making, linked together gives rich opportunities for education (the linked process can be seen in the attached slides). Gamification can enter this process in two places: in the structuring of lessons, and in the methods of assessment. Experiential learning and gamification are not mutually exclusive. The lived, memorable activity gives learners a chance to explore ethical dilemmas, weigh consequences, and emotionally experience possible solutions. Bringing Kolb’s approach of reflective observation and active experimentation into gamified lessons, could create immersive situations where students must reflect on real or simulated dilemmas, and then connect them to ethical and religious principles. In this way, religious education does not retreat into tradition, but actively contributes in the shaping of resilient individuals who can live with integrity in an ever-changing digital age.
View the presentation in full here:
Sfet, I. (2025, September 17). Developing Ethical Decision-Making in the Age of AI. AIEOU Inaugural Conference, University of Oxford. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17290337
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