Right Relationship: With God, Each Other, and AI

For God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son.

This past week, as I said at the beginning of Mass,
has been quite a week for me.
It was extraordinary.
I had the opportunity to sit in the Synod Hall
as the Holy Father gave his new encyclical,
Magnificat Humanitas, to the world.

I am still unpacking the magnitude
of the event in my life,
but there are some things that really stood out for me.
First of all,
this was the first time in the history of the Church
that the Holy Father has ever presented any encyclical.
Normally, that is the role of the cardinals or theologians.

And even more extraordinary was
they invited a non-Church, non-theologian layperson
to the platform, a co-founder of Anthropic, Chris Olah.
It was an extraordinary moment,
because we have not done this as Church before.
And that in itself was giving witness to something new.

Pope Leo took the name Leo XIV
because he believed that we are
in a new industrial revolution.
The first Pope Leo came to the papacy
in the industrial revolution
and wrote a famous document called Rerum Novarum.
It was the beginning of the social doctrines of the Church.

Our Leo XIV took that name
because he knew we are in a new industrial revolution
called “Artificial Intelligence.”
And he wrote this encyclical.
But what was most magnificent was when Chris Olah,
who I have been meeting with over the last eight or nine months,
regularly, he and his staff, monthly,
and who I now regard as a friend,
said something that was profound,
and it was a challenge for the whole world to hear.

He said that, as a person from the business world,
we have incentives that often run
against doing the right thing.
The incentives of profit, of economic viability,
geopolitical reasons, and the sustaining of a large business.
He said, even though we try,
even though we have people of goodwill
inside these companies who try to do the right thing,
we need people outside to exert influence
and to help us to do the right thing.

Then at the end of his talk,
he gave a challenge to the Pope and to the world.
He said we need three pointers, if you would, to discern it.
First, he said, a commitment to the global poor.
He said if these AI systems in fact succeed,
then there will be massive displacement of work.
We need to come up with structures to help the global poor.

The second one was the need to have a creative imagination
as to how to allow humanity to flourish
in the age of artificial intelligence.
That requires discernment.
That is not an obvious way to do that,
and we need help to do that.

Finally, the third one is that these artificial intelligences
are developing emerging behaviors that are confusing,
and that need deep discernment,
because they are mimicking humans in profound ways,
and they are very, very powerful.

Now, it was extraordinary for him to say that.
But what was even more extraordinary,
at the end, the Holy Father took up that challenge
and directly addressed Chris Olah.
He said, “I thank you for accepting our invitation
to be on this platform,
and we receive your challenges gratefully and willingly
for the world.
On behalf of the world, I accept your challenges for the world.”

What struck me was how incredibly humble
on both sides, both Chris Olah and the Holy Father,
to both challenge and to be challenged
in each other's ways.
That is what it is called to have a right relationship.

Even though we might disagree on a lot of things,
and the Church does disagree with a lot of things
that the business world does.
To be able to invite them onto the platform,
and for the business world to say,
yes, we accept this challenge as well.
See, that is what is called right relationship.

Here in Silicon Valley, the eyes of the world are on us now,
for good or for bad, that is the reality.
Everyone is looking at what Silicon Valley
is now going to do with this challenge from the Holy Father.

That is significant.
But here is the challenge for all of us here at St. Simon's:
we swim in these waters,
and we do not realize what we swim in.
We must leave it and come back
before we realize what is actually happening.

We live in this water that views
everything as inputs and outputs,
investments and returns.
That is the business world.
We just breathe it in and think nothing of it,
but it is unusual, my friends.
This is not how it is around the world.

What happens is fine for the business world,
but the challenge is that it often bleeds over
into our personal world too.
And we start to look at our friendships in the same way,
as inputs and outputs, investment and return.

What am I getting out of this friendship?
What am I putting in, and what am I getting out?
That is not helpful.
It is not human.
Because humanity is about right relationship.

It is about being engaged.
And that is where we as humans can flourish,
when we get the relationship right.
What is the relationship we are looking to have?
That is the very thing we celebrate today,
the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity.

It is about right relationship with each other.
Now, bear in mind what this says:
that God the Father loves the world so much
He gave His Son.
There is this relationship with the world
that is based in love.

The love that flows between them,
this is St. Augustine who says,
the love that flows between the Father and the Son
is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

When we enter into that circle,
that virtuous circle of love,
when we allow ourselves to be loved and to love,
then we are entering into that right relationship,
the Trinitarian relationship with the triune God.
But the challenge for us is to really live it
and understand what it means.

The Old Testament reading from Exodus
gives us a great example of this.
Moses went up, got the Ten Commandments,
and the tablets came down.
They had melted all the gold and built a golden calf,
and he was angry, and he shattered the two stone tablets.
Moses was angry, and we assume that God was angry.
Moses is then told by God
to go back to the mountain with two blank tablets
and to do it over.

So he goes up the mountain,
and that is where we pick up today.
What does God say to Moses?
He is not a God of retribution.
He calls Himself, “Lord, Lord,
slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.”
That is the Lord reminding Moses who He is,
and thus reminding us who He is.

In the sight of infidelity and unforgiveness,
God is forgiving.
God is trying to set right the relationship every single time.
And He gives us the chance to do so.
All we have to do is receive it.
So that is the great gift.

All we have to do is say,
“Yes, Lord, please, give me your love.”
And we receive it gratefully.
That is what Moses does.
But Moses goes one step further,
and the Lord takes it up.

He says, “Come along with us.
Walk with us. Accompany us.”
God does and He always has, ever since.
He accompanies us in everything we do.

So in this moment,
this inflection point in history,
this artificial intelligence,
God is with us.
We have to remember that.
God is with us in every single moment of our day.
And we must become aware of that presence of God
and attend to it and make sure that we are attentive to it
and in right relationship with it.

So what does that mean for us in our daily life?
First of all, it means
we have to find some time for God in our prayer.
I know you hear me say it endlessly.
But if we are not listening and talking to God
each and every day,
how can we have right relationship?
Can you imagine being in your house
with the person you live with
and never talking or listening to them?
That would be a very weird relationship.

You need to have the ability
to sit, and to listen, and to spend time.
So that is the first thing I ask of you:
to have right relationship with God
by spending time.
Spend a little less time on television,
or on your phone,
there is a multitude of other things you can give up.
But allow some time not just to talk at God,
but to learn to listen to God.

Then the other thing is right relationship with each other.
If God is willing to forgive us,
then we are called to forgive others.
So think of one person
with whom you are not in right relationship right now.
Maybe it is a family member
who has said or done something
that is just strange, or hurtful, or painful,
and it is time to let it go
and to have right relationship with them.
Or maybe it is somebody in your extended community.
But it is time to let it go.

It is time to come to the table,
to put it down here at the table,
to establish right relationship,
to go back to them and say,
let us accompany one another again,
just like God does for the people of Israel.

Then the last one is right relationship
with these machines, this artificial intelligence.
We need to be thoughtful about how we are using them
and how they are going to be in our lives.
So engage with this.
I know you may not have read the document yet,
but plan to read it.
Take a look at some of the challenges.
Start to ask the questions,
because the world is looking at us.
The world needs us to pay attention.

It is relying on us.
Some of you are in those companies,
working in programming.
Some of you are in companies
that are receiving them and using them for other things.
Some of you are investors in those companies.
Some of us are just users,
and some of us are not users at all.
No matter what, we all have a role to play.

As the Pope says in his encyclical,
the challenge is not to build a tower of Babel,
but instead to build the wall of Jerusalem,
the new wall, according to Nehemiah,
where every family is given a section of the wall.
My friends, each one of us is given a responsibility.
Each one of us has been given
the gift of love of the Trinity,
and we are called to receive it,
and then to give it to others.

So let us seek right relationship
with God, with one another,
and with artificial intelligence.

For God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son.