Catholic Futurist

Only about one in five Americans feels hopeful about AI. Fear moved into the space where a clear explanation should have been.Louis Kim, a former vice president at HP, moderates a conversation with Matthew Harvey Sanders, CEO of Longbeard and creator of Magisterium AI; Taylor Black, Director of AI and Venture Ecosystems in the Office of the CTO at Microsoft and founding director of the Institute for AI and Emerging Technologies at The Catholic University of America; and Vincent Higgins, CEO of the Builders AI Forum.For all those curious about the world of tomorrow and how to navigate the crucial choices presented by emerging technology, guided by the practical and timeless wisdom of the Catholic faith, join the Catholic Futurist Podcast.https://www.catholicfuturist.com/Timestamps:0:00 Intro0:57 What surprised them about AI adoption7:05 Hiring, layoffs, and dignity14:42 Subsidiarity and sovereign AI20:21 Rethinking the nature of work22:38 Physical AI and robots at home27:40 The last human role30:14 What is Catholic AI?

Dario Amodei writes that AI will be better than humans at essentially everything. Brian Green says that is simply not correct.Benjamin Crockett is joined by Brian Green of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, Brett Robinson of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at Notre Dame, and Devin Patel of the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy. They read "The Adolescence of Technology" together and keep returning to the work no machine performs. Caring for a child. Sitting with an elderly parent. Work that brings dignity to the person doing it and the person receiving it.For all those curious about the world of tomorrow and how to navigate the crucial choices presented by emerging technology, guided by the practical and timeless wisdom of the Catholic faith, join the Catholic Futurist Podcast.https://www.catholicfuturist.com/ Timestamps:0:00 Intro1:00 First impressions of the essay16:26 A country of geniuses26:32 Abundance, work, and dignity32:18 Formation and sabotage39:07 AI, autocracies, and China56:06 Breaking the link between work and worth1:06:32 Hope, and what comes next

Is it better to keep seminarians away from social media, or should they learn how to use it while they’re still in formation?Fr. Michael Kong shares what he learned while studying social media and evangelization in Rome, and why digital formation matters for the future priests.For all those curious about the world of tomorrow and how to navigate the crucial choices presented by emerging technology, guided by the practical and timeless wisdom of the Catholic faith, join the Catholic Futurist Podcast.https://www.catholicfuturist.com/ Timestamps:0:00 Intro1:10 The Catholic storytelling workshop4:30 Catching eyes in three seconds6:20 Social media as a marketplace8:40 The prayer that reached the most people12:15 Don't give a baby a steak15:30 What seminaries don't teach21:00 His thesis: TikTok vs Instagram25:40 Online reactions vs in person30:00 Why his parish is growing

When Pope Leo XIV invited Anthropic to speak at the Vatican launch of his new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, many asked: was it genuine dialogue — or a photo op? Matthew Harvey Sanders, Fr. Michael Baggot, and Fr. Kenny Ang take it head-on, tracing the conversation from machine consciousness and designer babies to the transhumanist push to leave our humanity behind — all through the lens of the Pope's new encyclical on AI.Curious about the world of tomorrow, guided by the timeless wisdom of the Catholic faith? Join the Catholic Futurist Podcast, hosted by Matthew Harvey Sanders: https://www.catholicfuturist.com/  

Would you let an AI doctor diagnose you and write your prescription? Sit with that for a second, then hear the other side.In this episode of Catholic Futurist, Benjamin Crockett sits down with Michael Pencina, director of Duke AI Health, and Louis Kim, who moved from tech into healthcare and now works on spiritual care in hospice and palliative medicine. The same tech that feels wrong in your own clinic could put 50 hospitals in regions that have none. They wrestle with what we lose when no person is in the room, and the lines Catholic healthcare won't cross.Timestamps:0:00 Intro2:27 What makes Catholic healthcare different4:56 The hardest debates7:59 What AI does in hospitals today10:37 Lines AI should never cross13:00 The future of care14:55 AI in hospice and spiritual care16:27 Changing the economics of care19:18 What the Church should do now

Every story you love has a human fingerprint on it. Someone felt something they needed to share, and they made it real. A machine can copy the shape of that, but no one is inside it.In this episode of Catholic Futurist, Benjamin Crockett sits down with actor, producer, and Novo Inspire Studios co-founder Lorenzo Henrie, who plays the apostle Jude Thaddeus in Mel Gibson's The Resurrection of the Christ, and Dave Plisky, Director of Marketing & Digital and Director of Product & Innovation at DeSales Media. They talk about what makes a story human, what AI can and can't do in film, and why that difference matters for Catholic storytellers.Timestamps:0:00 Intro: AI lacks a soul2:27 AI in film today5:18 Corporate greed & AI8:27 Replacing human artists12:47 The social media trap17:03 Return to simple living22:23 A Christian tech manifesto

Should you say "please" and "thank you" to ChatGPT? The answer says a lot more about you than you think.Recorded at the Builders AI Forum in Rome, Benjamin Crockett sits down with philosopher Steven Umbrello and Fr. Jean Gové. They explore why being kind to AI shapes your own character, why forming bonds with a chatbot can quietly harm you, and what the Church says makes a human being truly different from a machine.Timestamps:0:00 Intro2:35 The Catholic Turing Test3:55 What is a Turing Test?5:14 Falling for AI chatbots9:12 Will AI be conscious?13:30 Why inefficiency matters18:43 What "consciousness" really means22:54 Why manners matter with AI26:37 What the Church should do

What keeps AI researchers up at night? Not robots turning evil. Something far more plausible — and far more urgent.Most conversations about AI risk deal in abstractions. This one doesn't. Three guests at the intersection of faith, technology, and global security sit down to name the specific scenarios that concern them most — and to ask whether the Catholic Church is uniquely positioned to respond.In this episode of Catholic Futurist, Benjamin Crockett is joined by John-Clark Levin, Research Lead at Kurzweil Technologies, William Jones, Associate of the Futures Program at the Future of Life Institute, and Fr. Michael Baggot, L.C., Professor of Bioethics at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum.They don't agree on everything. But they converge on this: the Catholic Church has something to say about AI that Silicon Valley cannot offer — and the window to say it is narrowing.Together they explore: why the most dangerous AI risks require no leap of speculative logichow geopolitical pressure leads good people to catastrophic choiceswhat AI companionship is doing to human relationships and the soulwhether Pope Leo could play the role John Paul II played in the nuclear conversationand what genuine hope looks like at the edge of civilizational riskTimestamps:0:00 – The "Grown" Intelligence 1:04 – Real-World Risks vs. Science Fiction 3:31 – The Geopolitical Arms Race 5:44 – AI and Nuclear Escalation 7:19 – Seeking a Collaborative Framework 10:51 – The Lack of Interpretability 12:53 – Deceptive Alignment 13:26 – Collateral Damage to the Soul 18:28 – The "Demonic Summer of Love" 24:21 – A Call for Democratic Control 28:28 – The Global Competitive Landscape 30:04 – The Case for Optimism

Most of us move through an education system we didn’t design—and rarely have the opportunity to question.Fr. Ambrose Criste, O.Praem., does. Speaking at an AI conference in Rome, he traces the roots of modern schooling to systems built for efficiency and output—and asks whether Catholic education is still operating within a model not originally designed for human formation.Catholic education, he argues, has a deeper purpose: the formation of the human person, ultimately ordered toward the salvation of souls. Everything else—grades, college, career—follows from that.His response to the AI moment is not a better system of production, but a renewed vision of what a human being is—and what education is for.Timestamps:0:00 Intro: The True Purpose of Education1:03 Meet Father Ambrose1:34 How the Church is Actually Using AI4:08 The Problem with "Factory" Schools8:18 Why AI Will Never Have True Intelligence9:32 The Hidden Dangers of Tech Algorithms13:17 Why AI Can't Replace Human Teachers15:36 Using AI as a Teaching Tool17:23 Finding Hope in Screen-Free Schools

A student sees a billboard: "Don't hire humans. Hire us robots."He walks into class and asks his professor: What's the point of this degree?That question—captured in this conversation—is the question of our era. And without a robust understanding of the human person, institutions struggle to answer it.In this episode of Catholic Futurist, Benjamin Crockett sits down with Dr. Aaron Dominguez, Provost of Catholic University of America, and John Brahier, a Catholic educator and Director of Partnerships at Longbeard, to explore what happens when an entire generation of students begins to wonder if humans are becoming obsolete.Timestamps:0:00 - The Mirroring Effect of LLMs5:54 - AI as a New Industrial Revolution7:11 - Human Soul vs. Digital Simulation12:15 - Responding to the "Hire Robots" Narrative16:11 - Three Pillars for Human-AI Teams19:47 - Protecting Human Dignity Amidst Job LossThe conversation examines how the Church's understanding of Imago Dei serves as a safeguard against digital reductionism—the belief that humans are just a collection of automatable tasks.Drawing on the launch of new AI degree programs at Catholic University and real challenges facing educators, they discuss:why education must remain an incarnational encounterthe three pillars for ensuring technology leads to human flourishinghow to prepare for a world where work is disrupted but dignity remainsand what it means to find purpose when your profession may not exist in ten years