A look at the faith-based community working toward responsible AI practices

Who are the voices working to ensure that the faith-based and human concerns are being heard in the fast-paced world of artificial intelligence (AI)? One of those voices, Ben Olsen, founder and CEO of interintelligence, a faith and technology advisory firm, recently spoke with OSV News’ Charles Camosy about his efforts connecting faith efforts with new AI technology.

— Charles Camosy: Can you give us a sense of your story, especially as your faith intersected with your work in tech?

— Ben Olsen: I studied philosophy at Seattle Pacific University (and was briefly enrolled at The Catholic University of America for a Master of Arts in philosophy), but decided to pivot into a career in technology. I had a girlfriend back home (now my wife), and it seemed like the more stable path for starting a family.

Then around 2016, while working as a data architect and teaching data visualization at the University of Washington, I had started to see how ethics and technology were intersecting, and so I sought out ways to contribute to the new field of responsible AI. I joined Microsoft full -time, then built the company’s first AI ethics course in collaboration with Seattle University, a Jesuit school. I went on to help write Microsoft’s first responsible AI standard, and then drive responsible innovation in multiple leadership roles.

As that work matured along with my experience, I saw gaps in the industry’s understanding of responsible practice. We had principles for privacy, transparency and inclusiveness, but nothing focused specifically on the protection of children, families or elders. So I founded Microsoft’s first cross-company initiative on generative AI and child safety. I also founded the responsible AI team in Windows, where I connected the child safety movement with our regulatory work and family safety within product use.

Religion was missing from responsible AI too. Religious freedom is a fundamental human right. Most of the world’s people are religious in some form; yet few in the industry were asking how AI affects religious life, or how the wisdom of religious traditions could illuminate wise AI development.

I’m an Eastern (Ruthenian rite) Catholic, which deeply informs my own ethical sense. Tech orgs themselves, however, are pluralistic by nature. I knew that the technology industry wouldn’t listen to just one faith; this would need to be an interreligious endeavor.

The Second Vatican Council’s declaration “Nostra Aetate” helped me understand why interreligious work matters for a faithful Catholic. The council taught that the teachings of other religions “often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.” That truth is Christ, the Word of God, through whom all things were made.

The declaration calls Catholics to “dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions.” I read that phrase as a personal calling and path. It inspired me to co-found Technology for Religious Empowerment, or T4RE, at Microsoft in early 2025, to empower religious organizations through research and collaboration.

I then helped found and lead the Faith Family Technology Network, a multifaith network of more than 150 experts that is thriving and making a big impact across policy and culture today.

Now, as founder and CEO of interintelligence, I do advisory work that includes helping startups and AI labs push their thinking around responsible AI practices through the wisdom of religious traditions.

— Camosy: What’s your sense of where we are right now as a culture regarding AI? How would you name the current moment?

— Olsen: I think one of the best essays out there about our current moment is Gregory Conti’s Compact magazine piece “The AI Apocalypse Is Already Here,” for expressing the sense of looming moral and cultural threat. People can see that there are terrifying possibilities. There are also exhilarating opportunities; both in the potential of the technology itself, and for those of us who are seeking to meet the moral challenge of the moment.

Those who can hold fast to the encounter with truth are needed as gatekeepers and guardians of human culture. And a growing movement of people and projects are bringing ancient wisdom to bear on these technologies: Future of Life’s Pro-Human work, AI & Faith, Faith Family Technology Network, Noesis Collaborative and many more.

I am very bullish on multifaith work for AI ethics; there are so many ways we overlap on our care for the family, for the rule of law, for safety, for privacy, for the flourishing of the next generation, for treating the elderly with a human face and more.

— Camosy: And what about the Church? What is the moment before us?

— Olsen: As St. Julie Billiart once said, “We must have courage in the century we live in. Great souls are needed, souls who have the interests of God at heart.” We, the faithful, are tasked with upholding the truth of Christ through the age of AI.

As the body of Christ, we have an obligation to deepen our ability to dialogue: to suffer for the possibility of encountering God’s “symphonic truth” (Hans Urs von Balthasar) in opposing viewpoints and in those who are different from us, to lean bravely into our plurality at this moment, and to deepen our roots as faithful Catholics while we engage bravely in the world. In short, we are called to be saints in the AI age, at a time when this new technology makes it possible to commit so many old sins in new ways.

For those who can, it’s time to get deeply technical, stay current and build the Catholic response, as friends in the Builders AI Forum are doing. As an Eastern Catholic, I helped create a platform called Byzantine AI, a resource like Magisterium AI for Eastern Catholics.

For parents, it means practicing discernment around AI use for your children and families. Increasingly, I’ve seen parishes, dioceses and eparchies providing guidance and support to the faithful.

Now is the time for clergy and lay leaders to educate themselves. The recent creation of the USCCB’s AI Taskforce is a structural answer to how the Church can be unified in our discernment. And to hold fast to the beloved face of Christ, simultaneously unchanging and ever-moving, in our time of technological upheaval.

— Camosy: Can you say more about the Church and medicine? We have massive healthcare institutions, both locally and globally. What’s your suggestion for how these institutions should enter the AI revolution?

— Olsen: In July 2025, in my “InterIntelligence Manifesto,” I wrote about how the origins of the modern hospital are found in the Basileias, established by St. Basil the Great in fourth-century Caesarea. It was part hospital, part hospice and part leprosarium. Modern healthcare has deeply Catholic origins.

My suggestion to Catholic healthcare leaders and professionals is that they look to their core business with the Church’s guidance in hand. Worki, the healthcare startup I advise, is referring to “Magnifica Humanitas” as it builds AI-powered solutions to inform decision-making across non-clinical roles, bringing together workforce information from the systems a hospital already runs.

This requires that a new level of care must be taken to protect and provide proper control over a patient’s data, such as navigating how to maintain privacy and transparency with data that informs AI systems. It is also centering the encyclical’s guidance that retraining, reskilling and redeployment are essential to trustworthy, responsible use of AI.

For those working in healthcare, I’d encourage simply starting a dialogue within your organization about how you might begin to put “Magnifica Humanitas'” principles into practice. You don’t have to do it alone — there are many friends and leaders in this space to help you on the path.

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