Can the Pope stop the AI arms race?

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 logic
• how geopolitical pressure leads good people to catastrophic choices
• what AI companionship is doing to human relationships and the soul
• whether Pope Leo could play the role John Paul II played in the nuclear conversation
• and what genuine hope looks like at the edge of civilizational risk

Timestamps:

• 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