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When Michael Boland graduated from Notre Dame with a government and international relations degree in 1975, he did not expect the economic reality he would encounter over the next 50 years that would put his Catholic education to the test. To put things into perspective, in 1975 IBM launched their first portable computer, and J. Paul Getty was considered the world’s wealthiest person after earning his fortune in lucrative Saudi-Kuwaiti oil concessions in the 1950s. In the technologically evolved 2026 economy, Boland lives in the center of our nation’s federal government — while seeing firsthand the simultaneous evolution of generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems into smartphones, along with Elon Musk’s autonomous vehicle and space exploration ventures making him the world’s first trillionaire.
During an interview with Scholastic on Sept. 10, Boland described his vocation of linking AI with public policymakers as part of a longstanding moral imperative of the Catholic Church to preserve the essence of humanity. While discussing his role in a bipartisan group of investors that launched Dome Compass Inc in 2015, he invoked the commonality from the papal encyclicals “Rerum Novarum” (1891) and “Magnifica Humanitas” (2026) that “eliminating any opportunity for goods and money to transcend the idea of the development of every human being must be nonpartisan and non-negotiable.”
Further, Boland drew a parallel to his experience of advising government officials and housing market investors during the 2008 financial crisis by referencing recent developments in the world of AI — including the widely publicized resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon over claims that his company was more focused on profit than prevention of a “superhuman technology that can revolutionize any field overnight with unceasing progress.” It would also be important to note that the CEO of Anthropic came forward less than five days after the interview, calling for an immediate slowdown in developing a technology of his own making.
In creating Dome Compass, Boland hoped to take his expertise into the fight of confronting the simple supply and demand fluctuations of AI development today — while giving his alma mater the first dibs at neutral, civil discourse in policy formation. On the urgency of the matter, Boland emphatically noted that the problems with this new technology aren’t only based in the “predictably sparse supply of trust in its development, but because there is a significant gap in the cost-benefit analysis of projected revenues from AI infrastructure investments,” mainly in the form of data centers.
The publishing of “Rerum Novarum” was intended to be a direct moral response to the upheavals between socioeconomic classes during the Industrial Revolution — a distinct parallel to one of Boland’s recent examples of data center investor and billionaire Kevin O’Leary calling out two female critics of his new Utah data center project as members of the Chinese Communist Party. Boland shares the view that market movers in AI development are “part of an overhyped and temporary economic bubble with [distinct] social costs,” and that extreme responses to resistance like this are part of a greater theme that policymakers can only address with the unconditional help of academics and advocates: AI has already gone rogue.
Boland’s story shows how a Notre Dame education brought him to the impressive feat of overcoming the hyperpolarization that has flooded our nation’s capital by working with real academics from his alma mater to foster civil dialogue on a pressing matter. This message carries a touch of irony, given that the university’s internal policy on AI has given faculty the autonomy to dictate the use of the technology so long as it remains a supplement to further developing the gifts and talents that students bring to the campus community.
It isn’t just academic communities that are struggling to develop a concrete approach to AI — as Boland has identified — since many policymakers take an oddly direct, hostile position toward the technology while its benefits and threats continue to evolve with it. In my time working with the Office of U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin, for example, the standard set by the office was that AI may not be used in work under any circumstances — amplifying the divided perspectives among lawmakers on how to balance the potential and risks of AI.
Frankly, Boland recognizes that “the University of Notre Dame and the Catholic Church are well-positioned” to contribute to the conversation of how regulation of AI evolves over time. In the rare occurrence of industry leaders calling for more developmental oversight from the government in their own industries, the top Republican and Democrat in the House of Representatives agreed in Sept. 13 interviews that Congress should put guardrails in place — potentially foreshadowing more dialogue opportunities for university officials with the continued support of Boland.