Hi everybody.

>> Hello.

>> Lots of young faces in this audience. I

like that. Yeah, very intergenerational.

So, I have my phone out. I'm not

checking messages while we have this

conversation. I do have a script that I

will probably just throw out as we talk,

but I like to have it as we begin.

Uh my name is Arty. I'm excited to be

here with these two women uh talking

about morality and ethics. And I have to

say that to prepare for this

conversation, I moved a book up my

reading list. Uh it was not Durkheim. It

was not the Pali Canon of Buddhism. I'm

Buddhist.

Uh I decided to read Careless People by

Sarah Williams, the ex-Facebook leader

and whistleblower. And the reason for

that is

I wanted to give myself a really healthy

dose of skepticism

so that as we talk about the power of

moral frameworks to reshape Silicon

Valley, I could be reminded very

recently of how that went.

And so,

you know, in her book, and it's

interesting I'm talking about her now

because she has this gag order, she

can't speak. Um

and so I'm lending my voice to this.

Um in her book

she describes these two leaders, Mark

Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg,

as anti-morality,

as anti-philosophy. They are

winner-take-all. They are pragmatists.

And also, they're standard-bearers in

Silicon Valley. They're standard I mean,

they have shaped how an entire

generation thinks of leadership.

And so I think the first question I have

to you is

explain to me why it's not

naive

to think that moral frameworks are

relevant to the AI revolution.

>> It's great. Yeah, do you want me to

start off?

>> Yeah, please.

>> I mean, I don't think it should come as

a surprise to any of us that morality is

hard. And that if you don't spend a fair

bit of time

even as a young adult, like in college

or early on in your career, thinking

about your values and developing the

right kinds of habits, then when your

career gets supercharged and you get

access to extraordinary wealth and

power, things can go off the rails. I

mean, this is this is like a tale as old

as time in philosophy

circles. If you ever read Plato's

Republic, it starts off with this really

famous thought experiment of this king

that gets a ring that basically allows

him to do whatever he wants. This is

totally what Tolkien ripped off, by the

way, for Lord of the Rings. So, ripped

off Plato.

But, the Greeks would tell this myth of

the ring of Gyges and they'd they'd ask

each other, like, "What would you do if

you suddenly had all this power?" And

the vast majority of folks would answer,

like, "I'd become awful. Like, I'd

become a tyrannical boss. I would become

narcissistic and self-centered. I

I would lose touch with reality." And I

think that we're starting to realize

that this isn't just a fantasy story in

Tolkien novels or a thought experiment

in Plato, but in fact, if you have a

generation of leaders who have not had

the opportunity to really think

seriously about their values, and then

they suddenly have access to great

wealth and power, that you know, things

get pretty weird. It's human nature.

>> So, you did take the

>> I think there's also So, I'm I'm from

tech, not from academia. I have an

academic job now, but I My first

academic job was Stanford, and it hired

me out of tech. I didn't come up through

like a PhD program or anything. And I

was I moved out to the Valley in 2011 as

a junior VC. And then I did VC for 3

years, then I started a company. I left

to go start a startup. So, I have

[clears throat] I lived here for 10

years, and I met Sheryl when she was in

her LinkedIn her Lean In era. Because I

was a junior VC at a time when there

were almost no women in venture capital,

right? And so, I was invited to Facebook

as part of this,

you know, come in and let's talk about

representation of women in tech,

representation of women in venture. And

so, I think that there is an interesting

gap in perception

between the belief that tech could be

neutral, and it could be a conduit, and

a belief that I don't I think that she

would not say that she is amoral, right?

I think that And I haven't read Sara's

book. I've read reviews of Sara's book,

and I have friends who worked there at

that time with very strong reactions to

it on on both sides. Um but,

I think that there was a sense that

societal issues were separate than

technical design. And so, I was very

active in calling for the first tech

hearings in 2017, right? Sitting in Mark

Warner's office and saying, "You need to

hold these hearings. You need to hold

these hearings. You need to hold these

hearings."

Um but, to try to actually like bring

those two things together, right? The

idea that design was power, that

consolidation of power was power, that

outputs were power, and that impact was

a function of power, and that again, you

could be quite moral and and quite

values-oriented and quite aware of

things in certain areas, but there were

these real blind spots about what the

technology they were developing was

impacting, and what their responsibility

for that was. And that's where I saw

that gap as a person who is here kind

of, you know, during that time.

>> So, just bridge that anecdote to the

question I have, which is is it then

naive to believe that moral frame that

people care that people in power at

these private companies in important

leadership roles

will be compelled by the question of

morality now?

>> I think you have to connect the moral

framework to the to the power and the

influence and the outcome. Like what is

it that this framework provides that

what is it that we want this framework

to connect to as far as a desired

outcome? When we talk about this, what

is it that because otherwise the the

question also it can go in the other

direction, which is what is the

what is the value of the framework if it

offers us a

maybe a moral North Star, but doesn't

carry with it any policy guidance, any

implementation guidance. How are we

connecting these two things I think is

the question.

>> So, someone who recently had a lot to

say about this was Pope Leo the 14th,

who came out with a 42,000 word

manifesto.

And I thought that Megan you could do

the job of

not summarizing the 42K, all right?

>> [laughter]

>> In a sentence.

No, but actually there were there were

two biblical reference, two construction

sites that he really wanted the world to

know to decipher how we're building the

future. Can you talk about those two

construction sites to help people who

don't know them?

>> Absolutely. So,

>> magnificent humanity, magnifica

humanitatis, the ultimate beach read of

summer 2026. Like you should download

it. You don't need to bring anything

else with you.

>> to share. I used I used Beachify to read

everything because I listen really well.

So, Gwyneth Paltrow was reading it for

me.

>> Shut up.

>> [laughter]

>> What a world that we live in.

>> So, then it becomes a beach [laughter]

read. Okay.

>> You know, joking aside, this encyclical

is a home run. I'm a Roman Catholic.

Obviously, work a lot around Catholic

communities. I read I read a lot of

encyclicals for my job.

Uh but, this is going to go down in

history as one of the big ones. So, if

you're going to try to dabble in

Catholic thinking about issues, this is

a great time to take note that the

leader of a 2,000-year-old

major world religion that has 1 billion

people on planet Earth that follow his

moral and policy directions has chosen

to devote his thinking to this issue. I

mean, this is This is a very much a

historic event.

He opens the encyclical. The encyclical

has kind of three beats.

The first beat is him showing that this

2,000-year-old institution is not only

capable of thinking about this really

new issue, but in fact is entitled to

weigh in on it. So, he spends a lot of

time saying, you know, it actually We

are We are entering the the chat.

>> with the history that during the

Industrial Revolution the church said

this and

>> Absolutely. So, you know, he reminds us

that his predecessor, Pope Leo the 13th,

when the Industrial Revolution was going

off the rails in the late 1800s, weighed

in and just said, "We are not building

our economy this way. We're not going to

treat labor and workers this way." And

the the the the role of the Pope and the

role of the church has been at key times

intervening and trying to be the adult

in the room when technology or society

are moving really fast in ways that have

not been good for humanity as a whole.

So, you know, the first beat of the

encyclical is really tries to

demonstrate that. The second beat is a

blistering critique of the technocratic

paradigm,

which is, you know, very much the live

paradigm in the United States right now

and in our culture, which is this idea

that ethics is a matter of just

optimizing problems, just trying to find

the optimal solution to every single

problem, including the problems of uh

what makes a meaningful human life. And

then the final part, which is kind of

like the hippy part, but also the part

that I like the best, is he says the

alternative to technocratic paradigm is

what he calls the civilization of love.

A civilization where we say at the end

of the day, all of our innovation and

progress is going to be measured by how

we treat each other at the end of this,

and our capacity to love and care for

fellow human beings. And so, he he opens

with these two metaphors. He's like,

we're kind of facing a choice about what

kind of We are all builders. What kind

of builders are we going to be?

We could be the builders like the Tower

of Babel. And for those of you guys who

can't remember your Sunday school

lessons,

the the Tower of Babel went really

badly. Or didn't

>> [laughter]

>> OR DIDN'T EVEN HAVE THE opportunity to

take it. The Tower of Babel went really

badly.

Uh

humanity decided that they were going to

build uh they they they felt like they

didn't have enough access to God. So,

they decided they were literally going

to build a gigantic tower that would

help them go invade God's space. And

then the tower falls over, and humanity

ends up like really distant from each

other. Um this is where, you know, we

babble, the idea that we all speak

different languages comes from this.

This was the result of the tower

collapsing. It's like humanity just

ended up not able to understand each

other or God anymore. That's one option.

>> it correct to say that in the story of

Babel, what drives the growth is not

some sort of centered vision of God or

morality, but it's sheer ambition?

>> Yeah, we want to be God. Like something

great is happening up there, and by our

efforts we can get to that point.

The other metaphor, and this was a deep

cut. I had to Google this when I saw the

encyclopedia. I didn't know the the

story of Nehemiah. You could I'm a

Catholic. We don't read the Bible. We

just have it like summarized for us.

But

>> It's just in every hotel room.

>> Exactly. It's just in every hotel room.

Uh but uh in this story, this is another

way to be a builder, which is very

collaborative. And that you realize your

city's in trouble, that your city's in

need, that your fellow man is in need,

and you you have ideas about how to

rebuild the city, but you don't force

them on other people. You really try to

collaboratively discern what are what

are we meant to do? And obviously, the

Pope is is pumping for the latter, which

you know, we we don't have a whole lot

of discernment going on in this moment.

We are definitely just kind of shooting

to get the tower as as high as possible.

I found it to be such a beautiful and

vivid portrayal of two different very

different modes of building.

Um but, who cares what I think? Renee,

what did you think?

>> I [snorts] was struck by um first, I

think again, um humanity is in the

title, right? Magister Humanitatis. This

emphasis on uh AI serving the people, AI

serving the public. So, I appreciated

the focus on that.

Um

the the notion, I think also, which my

work focuses more on influence and

power. And so, the focus on um the

problem not being killer robots, but

consolidation of power. The problem

being centralized control. And that, I

think, is the problem with social media.

It was, in fact, the problem of

centralized control. It was that uh

everybody in the world had to be in some

way on three platforms, and the design

decisions made by those three platforms

uh were the decisions that shaped public

discourse, that that shaped elections,

that led to genocide in some cases,

right? And I think that um the

recognition that it was, in fact, that

consolidation, that that the incredibly

profound power was housed in the hands

of a few. And the head of the Catholic

Church making that point. And the thing

that's interesting about uh it coming

from a religious leader, also, is that

this is not somebody who is

viable, right? This is not somebody who

is They're going to They're not going to

sit down and negotiate with him and try

to change his mind on this. It's not

going to work, right? He's coming from a

a different place. And so, uh I

appreciated that aspect of it, also. Um

he goes into just war doctrine a bit.

There's some very kind of niche cuts

that tie into I don't know how many

people are familiar about the fight that

Anthropic had uh with the Trump

administration about autonomous

weaponry, and

uh

>> [snorts]

>> who should be in control of that, and

who should have um you know, who should

it be? The AI companies? The government?

Like, where should that power reside?

So, I think that there was there was

quite a lot that was in it that was um

Again, the Vatican very nicely

summarized it on There's a like a TLDR,

so you can go and read that. I did a

podcast with Chris Hale, who runs a

Substack called Letters from Leo, which

is fantastic also. Really great

newsletter where he has been producing

sort of [snorts] deep dives into various

pieces of it that are quite nice if you

just want to go and sort of find your

issue area and read it. And I think that

people have been trying to

>> podcast, Lawfare.

>> Yeah, right. And I did I hosted him on

the Lawfare podcast to to talk to him

about it and to try to get at this

question of how should we think about

power in Silicon Valley and power in the

Vatican and the intersection of these

things with with centralized corporate

power.

>> At this juncture, I don't know Renee, I

think you've suggested a little bit what

your answer would be, but if you could

each elaborate at this juncture, if you

could each make a moral plea to the

builders, the leaders of the AI

revolution, what would that moral plea

be?

Go for it, Aiden.

>> Yeah, I can start it off. We

at the University of Notre Dame, we have

been leading a big effort to try to help

people of faith find their voice in

these debates about artificial

intelligence and and that's brought us

out to San Francisco quite a bit from

from South Bend, Indiana. We were out

here in November doing a dinner with a

bunch of kind of like mid-level software

engineers.

And at the start of the dinner, one of

the engineers piped up and he he said

with with all earnestness,

"You realize that only 300 to 400 people

on planet Earth matter right now,

right?" And he even said it to me like

kind of like, you know, you sweet lady

from Indiana

>> [laughter]

>> who thinks who with your with your

morality who thinks that this can be

contained.

Um and I remember being like a little

hot under the collar at the dinner

because he didn't think anybody in

Indiana mattered.

Um and he mentioned descriptively, not

in a mean way, but I remember thinking

afterwards like, you're wrong.

And, you know, first reason you're wrong

is morally. Like, everyone matters.

Like, when it comes to who matters,

whose lives matter, whose futures

matter,

every single person on planet Earth's

lives matter, morally. But, he's also

wrong economically.

You see these AI companies in the race

of their lives to bring these products

to a global marketplace.

And regardless of what happens or

doesn't happen with regulation, at the

end of the day, the companies that

succeed are going to be the companies

that find users, and the companies that

fail are going to be the companies that

alienate them.

And to

get to this next phase of AI development

without having acute sensitivity, to use

a coarse term, to product-market fit, to

more product-morality fit, to making the

the 6 billion users you're trying to

address with your product feel relevant

and seen by this absolutely

revolutionary

like you are making a catastrophically

bad business mistake and a a

catastrophically bad moral mistake.

>> Let me ask you a question. And this is

really I think something that happens

for everybody who is not from Silicon

Valley, but then steps into the

ecosystem. There is this kind of like

profound, I think, psychic, I would call

it spiritual, but you could say say

psychic effect. Do you find yourself

in a tussle with holding on to your own

value system? Because even as you're

speaking, I hear you slipping into

McKinsey consultant language.

>> How How do I sound? Do I sound

convincing?

>> I Well, I mean,

what I'm hearing is a person who's

beating the drum for morality. He's

talking about love as a central value,

but then also, by the way, everyone's a

consumer.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> And it's

to me, the narrative power of it is it's

so overwhelming that even people who are

explicitly dedicated to values such as

love

flip in.

>> But see, this is what I think, you know,

I say this again as a Catholic and as a

philosopher. I think one of the things

we most desperately need right now, this

year, are people who are able to speak

the different languages in the

increasingly different worlds that we

live in. So, I'm I'm I've been out here

in Silicon Valley all of this week. Next

week, I'm going to Rome and we're going

to be in the Vatican and

one of the biggest issues we see in the

immediate future, I see in the immediate

future, is you've got these cultures

Northern Indiana, San Francisco,

California, Rome, Italy that are Tower

of Babel just like drifting away from

each other at light speed and unable to

communicate about basic questions. But

we're all in this together. Like this

technology is going to change every

single one of our lives. So, one of the

most important skills I think some of us

can develop right now if we care about

ethics is just learning how to speak the

vernacular of all of these different

tribes so hopefully we can locate that

common ground and I don't know if we do

a good job at it again. I probably sound

like a like a very, you know, a very

earnest Midwesterner when I walk in, but

we're trying our best.

>> This is why we need help.

>> up. You're showing up.

>> why we listen to hardcore.

>> [laughter]

>> Renee, you're

>> You know, I was it's a it's a hard

question because I think in terms of

product design and policy. So, um

one of the things that I was thinking

about was the parallel to the content

moderation wars and uh what that policy

experience was like over a decade,

right? So, in 2015, the

um you know, the I'm trying to remember

the year of the situation in Myanmar. It

might have been 2014, maybe a little bit

earlier. Uh but what you started to see

was the recognition that design was

having impact in the real world and it

took a while to get there. There was

never any regulation passed. The

government in the United States did

nothing. It couldn't get there. Couldn't

agree. Democrats Republicans couldn't

agree on anything. So nothing was done,

right? Which led to Europe doing a bunch

of stuff that people have mixed feelings

on, but they did something. They did

something. Um so you had the platforms

then move through this period of

self-regulation.

And um and again, self-regulation isn't

inherently bad. It's just that it's

nicer when it comes with some regulation

backstopping it, maybe. But you have

this yeah.

>> [laughter]

>> I came from Wall Street, you know, we

have a tiered regulation there. But the

um the thing that was interesting about

it though was they they couched all of

their self-regulatory policy

um shifts that they made internally

voluntarily in moral language. And if

you read their policy documents at the

time, I did a whole paper on this and I

had to pull 10 years worth of these

policy documents and I read them all,

right? So so you read the the morality

in the language over time. We are doing

this because we believe it is our

responsibility to do it. We are coming

up with these election integrity

policies because we believe that people

should know the facts when they vote. We

are doing these health misinformation

policies because we believe that

children dying of measles is bad, right?

And we recognize that we play a role in

that. And so you had these more the

moral language and then all of a sudden

um in 2019 20 no sorry, 20 2020 or so or

2022, when the house flips and all of

the congressional investigations begin

and all of that is recast as censorship

and egregious tyrannical overreach that

the platforms did themselves

voluntarily, you see them walking back

immediately. It flips within 2 years and

we go back to the 2015 era of nothing.

And that is where we are today. And so I

was thinking about this in the context

of the AI companies, where again you

have this incredible power very very

centralized. Self-regulation is is where

it is, right? And and they are in a way

fighting, you know, there's there's some

tension there with the government. Um

there is this administration now, there

was the Biden administration previously.

Who knows what's coming next, but

they're not really rooting it in any

kind of moral decision. And this is why

I thought the Pope's encyclical was

actually so important because it does

have this uh continuity that goes beyond

a short-term American administration and

offers a sense of values that they could

be looking to as they make [snorts]

these decisions. And the encyclical, the

one last thing I'll say on it, is that

it does have a very very long

set of passages about labor.

And specifically about the dignity of

work, and that I think is the important

part because there's a lot of

a lot of people in the valley who I'm a

user of agentic systems quite heavily. I

find them incredibly useful. So I am not

a Luddite. I am not anti-AI. I'm not

anti-tech. I use it a lot. Um but it is

profoundly transformative. It is going

to have an incredible impact on labor.

And the idea that oh we're just going to

you know give everybody UBI or something

eventually, they hand wave. Oh we'll

figure that all out later. No, that has

to be central. And that was the other

thing that I appreciated about this was

the recognition that there is a dignity

to work and you have to have that

foundational in whatever policy comes

next, whatever policies we build for it.

And the government is failing. The

government is weak, so they're going to

make a lot of those decisions

themselves. And I hope that they have

that moral framework in mind when they

do.

>> He even goes so far as like a bolded

point in the encyclical to say

unemployment is an evil.

Like this is if if we allow that to

happen

without any you know care or attention

in our economy, widespread loss of jobs

for people for whom that was a great

source of their meaning and agency in

society, this is not just an economic

transition, but it is actually a social

evil that we've allowed. Which is I

thought that was a very bold statement.

>> You know, I would say on the labor

front, yeah, it it was striking

specifically for how it really

contradicts the current what would be

considered like a sort of more liberal

solution, which is universal basic

income, right? And one thing I thought

about in that and actually let me just

take out I don't want to misquote, so

I'm going to take my notes out here.

In the last column

uh David Brooks did for the New York

Times. I remember reading it, I was

like, "This is your last column? What

are you doing?" You know, anyway.

Um

he argued that morality has become a

dirty word.

Uh and that as a people, we suffer from

a loss of faith, quote, "a belief in

nothing." Trump is nihilism personified

with his assumption that morality is for

suckers.

And this comment about morality, I

thought about like, yeah, me amongst my

friends socially, how often do we talk

about the importance of a moral

people feel like, oh no, that's that's a

conservative word. It's what the

Catholics talk about.

>> [laughter]

>> AND I GUESS I'M WONDERING FOR EACH of

you,

if we're talking about the importance of

moral frameworks to to rein in AI,

maybe we have to talk

first of all,

what is the zeitgeist's relationship to

the word morality itself?

And I wonder if you share Brooks's take

or you differ from it from, you know,

you're each on the ground profoundly in

your own ways.

>> I agree with that take. I'm Catholic

also, um probably more on the liberal

side in the small L um sense of the word

than uh and then than he is, but um

no, I think that I think that we did um

as liberals sort of seed the ground on

some of those uh some of those terms and

and some of that

um that framework [clears throat] for

thinking that again transcends

individual administrations and party

lines and provides a through line that

otherwise gets lost as things

um whipsaw and flip back and forth from

one to the next.

>> You know, one of the passages

from ancient philosophy that's in my

head all the time when I follow US

politics now is it's from Thucydides,

but you know, there's one one attitude

about how the world fundamentally works

that's the strong do what they will and

the weak suffer what they must. That was

an That was an attitude the ancient

Athenians had. They would go to war and

they'd kill civilians and they would

just take whatever they wanted and

thought at the end of the day might

makes right. Like just whoever has the

most important question you could ever

ask is who has the power and who lacks

the power and that's what determines the

course of our lives and the course of

our society. And you know, in the

Catholic world and the world of Plato

and Aristotle, they really resisted that

fundamental assumption. That assumption

is very operative in our culture right

now, but they they really tried to

portray a different vision. The Roman

Empire in Jesus' time thought that they

would rule forever. The sun would never

set on their empire. They were totally

wrong. Even about how power works. They

thought they had it all and then it

turned out one day they did not.

And I think that one of the reasons why

I love studying philosophy, I love

teaching philosophy to all the young

people at Notre Dame is you don't have

to accept that fundamental premise that

at the end of the day, you know, there's

there's no such thing other than just

who has the power to get what they want

and who suffers. There's this deeper

question of what are we supposed to be?

What kind [snorts] of society are we

meant to build now that we have

extraordinary technology technology in

it? It's not just about accumulating as

much power as possible, but power to

what end? And this is still a question

that human beings are capable of asking.

I promise you. We could still ask this

question in America if we're willing to.

>> So, uh I think I have time for one more

question to you and Megan I want to talk

to you about money.

>> Let's go.

>> Uh

>> Another thing that's totally

unproblematic.

>> Before I was a journalist, I was a

community organizer, grassroots

movements. And uh

I read that you recently secured a $51

million grant to help Christian

teachings to help put Christian

teachings about human dignity into the

AI revolution.

>> Yes.

>> Explain how you're using the money.

>> [laughter]

>> Talk Talk about a problem that

philosophy grad school never prepared me

for is how to how to convert $50.8

million dollars units of human dignity.

We we are gradually working out. We're

focusing on kind of three groups. So, I

think that there are three arenas right

now where a lot of people's moral

attitudes are formed.

One is schools. And right now we look at

the education system and we see the

teachers and principals in public

schools and private schools. They're

under tremendous pressure to just adopt

AI as quickly as possible and not really

having any moment to think about how are

you teaching a whole generation of human

beings what human dignity means before

they enter this crazy world. So, we want

to get resources to school leaders to

really focus on this question. How do we

teach people about dignity before they

enter this this new world? We are

spending a lot of resources helping

churches, not just Catholic churches,

too, but many different faith

communities find their voice on these

issues and realize that maybe as like

little small churches, they don't have

power, but as a big church, they

actually are pretty important interest

group that could

that could play an important role in how

we design and regulate this technology.

And then finally, events like this. You

know, I want to live in a not too

distant future where if you Google what

do Christians think about AI, you don't

necessarily just get Peter Thiel.

But you actually get some really smart,

thoughtful people who are very invested

in this tradition, who are commenting on

the issues of the day and who are

sophisticated, understand the technology

really well, but are also representing

alternative values to maybe what we have

heard in the last two decades in the

tech industry.

>> You have to fight for the Google answer

engine summary of whether your stuff or

Peter Thiel's one thing.

>> Exactly. I know.

>> Can I ask [laughter] right quickly? Any

suggestions, Renee, for Megan's money?

>> Yeah, exactly. Yeah, if you got any

ideas, email us.

>> [laughter]

>> Partnerships, partnerships.

No,

but seriously, thank you so much, Megan

and Renee, for joining us and having

this conversation. And I guess the show

is going to continue downstairs. But

happy you all were here to take in these

ladies.

>> Thank you guys so much.