The Catholic Answer to ChatGPT? | Acutis AI Explained
Catholic AI is reshaping how we interact with technology. In this episode, Peter Cooney co-founder, reveals how Acutis AI is building an artificial intelligence platform rooted in Catholic teaching, protecting human dignity, encouraging authentic faith, and offering a compelling alternative to mainstream AI tools. Discover why Catholic social teaching matters in the age of ChatGPT.
Explore Acutis AI at: https://www.acutisai.com
Chapters
00:00 Founding Acutest AI
03:22 The Moral Framework of AI
15:16 The Impact of AI on Jobs
18:20 Inspiring Innovation and Creativity
21:31 Carlo Acutis and the Role of Acutest AI
26:34 AI and Its Impact on Young People
27:27 Safeguards and Controls for AI Use
28:54 Transparency and Parental Involvement
31:52 The Role of AI in Evangelization
33:24 Privacy and User Safety
42:50 The Human Element in AI
53:05 The Future of AI and Human Employment
58:36 Encouragement for Young People and Conclusion
Media Credits
Original Rebel Saints theme song written by Nicole Olea. Music arranged and produced in collaboration with AI using Suno.
Visit rebelsaintspodcast.com for complete show notes and more.
SUPPORT THE JOURNEY
Follow the show and leave a review to help more restless hearts find us.Facebook: facebook.com/groups/rebelsaintspodcastInstagram: @rebelsaintspodcast
TikTok: @RebelSaintsPodcast
Patreon: patreon.com/RebelSaintsPodcastEmail: rebelsaintspodcast@gmail.com
TRANSCRIPT
Nicole Olea: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Rebel Saints podcast. I’m your host Nicole Olea and this is the podcast for people whose hearts are restless until they rest in Christ. So if you are a Catholic, if you’re here because you have questions about Catholicism or you saw the topic today, I’m really excited you are here. So thank you. I know you don’t have to be here. I know there are a million other things you could be doing with your time. So I just appreciate you so much.
For today’s episode, I have a really cool interview I had with the co-founder of Acutis AI. His name is Peter Cooney, and I can’t wait for you to hear what he has to say and learn about this program that he’s built. So let’s just get into the interview.
Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
Today I have Peter Cooney here with me who is one of the founders of Acutis AI. Hi Peter, welcome to Rebel Saints.
Peter Cooney: Thanks so much for having me.
I would love to kind of just start off with you telling me a little bit about yourself and where you grew up and how this all came to be.
Yeah. So I actually grew up closer to Baltimore in the Baltimore area. I was homeschooled until high school and then for high school I went to the Heights and PTOAC. So we moved to this area I would say about like five years ago or so. So we’ve been in the Archdiocese of Washington for the last five years.
Nicole Olea: Me too.
And I’m currently a senior at University of Dallas. So I have like one more semester there if all goes well hopefully. And yeah, basically about I would say it was in around like November of last year, my brother and I—who we’ve been like building websites, building apps for like a long time—we noticed like this problem with AI and it was essentially like there’s no… the AI platforms don’t have like a good moral framework. And since we grew up in like a Catholic family like my mom took us to Mass like pretty much every day growing up, Catholic high school, Catholic college, we’re like a lot of people probably don’t notice this but this is like a really big issue for when people are asking questions about morality. So if you ask a question about abortion for example, the responses are really bad. And I mean there have been suicides connected to ChatGPT like especially with young people chatting with them. And so we’re like okay well like this is a problem there. There’s got to be a solution to this.
And so we kind of realized what if we just put all of the Catholic teaching and use that as the framework. So instead of this framework, as Sam Altman put it, like a team of moral philosophers, instead of this framework that they have, we’ll just use the framework of the Catholic Church, which has been around over 2,000 years. And so we just starting Christmas break, we just started building it. And we just got a library of church sources that we continue to add to all the time. But basically like the Catechism, a bunch of the encyclicals, just a bunch of other relevant church documents like the Summa and we use those as the basis for moral questions. So yeah, it was like it was a long time coming in a way just like growing up Catholic and kind of seeing things through that Catholic perspective. When we started using AI, we like saw it through a Catholic perspective. That’s how we noticed that.
Nicole Olea: That’s so cool. So a lot of people now are using AI. Even like if you go to Google, your various answers, you know, like with the ask engine and stuff, it’s like it’s all AI, right? Can people use Acutis AI like that? Like as they would like a regular search engine? Is it formatted for that or is it just kind of questions about morality?
Yeah, that’s the goal. Like our original goal was not to build like a smart Catechism or build like if someone has a question about something the Church teaches just ask this. The goal was really—and it’s something like I’ve thought a lot about like when you look at all the big companies out there like most of them are run by like very like secular people and people who don’t really take their faith seriously. And with something like AI, I mean, like some companies, it doesn’t make as big a difference. Like if it’s someone running like a grocery store, like I don’t care a whole lot about like what their morality is. But with something like AI, it’s like their morality is it reflects itself in the answers, right?
And so we’re like, why can’t it be like Catholics like building these things? And so we want to be just as useful as ChatGPT or Claude or any of the other platforms be able to use for all the same things but just with a Catholic lens instead of a secular lens essentially.
Nicole Olea: I love that so much. At the end of May, Pope Leo released his first encyclical which was focused on AI and how it affects human dignity. Were you surprised by that? You’re like, “Wow, this is like less than six months later or whatever.” All this attention is not only being brought to AI, but Catholics and having that moral compass with respect to this next, I guess, chapter in human evolution like and technology, I guess you could say. How did that feel when you realized, wow, this is like right in our wheelhouse?
Yeah, totally. Yeah, it was definitely I think it’s awesome and really important that Pope Leo is kind of getting ahead of the curve and keeping like the Church central to all like all this technological advancement. And I think that was a big part of the focus of his encyclical because I think with AI right now a lot of the conversations about it are speculative like what’s going to happen in the future like is it going to take everyone’s jobs like people don’t really know what’s going to happen and so I think by getting ahead of that curve I heard people like criticizing it and saying like oh like it’s not like specific enough but I think this is how you have to build AI like otherwise things are going to go bad. And he used a great example of the Tower of Babel. Like that’s what will happen like if we don’t like work to like serve God, if we just like if we just like are building this for our own wealth or our own power, whatever, things will go bad. And so I think he was especially directing it to the people building AI, not like obviously like to everyone like he wants people to read this and he wants people to use AI responsibly. But I think even how like he started it kind of starting with this is what the Church has said for the past 2,000 years like this isn’t like new teaching or anything. This is stuff we’ve been saying and his encyclical is basically just like building upon that. And I think he was almost trying to like evangelize a lot of the big tech people who are building this thing which I think I think it’s awesome and I really liked the encyclical. I think it was really well written.
Nicole Olea: Yeah, I still have my notes from the episodes like you know I did on it and I as I was reading this because we had been in contact I kept thinking about you and how innovative and creative it was for you guys to do this and that’s the human element right especially because AI is all based on human knowledge right.
Yeah, as a writer, I’ve actually lost clients to AI. You know, when ChatGPT first came out, they thought, “Oh, yeah, we’re good. We don’t need you anymore, right?” Which I was like, “That’s fine.” But I can tell like even just, you know, every social media post it seems these days, right? You’re getting like the contrast framing and it just they all sound the same. And I feel like we’re losing that human element, that human voice. As someone who is working in this space and growing in this space and developing this space, how do you foresee Acutis AI kind of keeping humans at the center of it and helping maybe humans keep their voice?
Yeah. I mean, I would say first of all, having like worked a ton with AI, like I can notice like instantly if something is AI generated and like images, like text and like it just like it instantly kind of like turns me off. It’s like if you don’t want to like put in the effort to like generate your own like poster for this event, it’s like why should I care to go? Like little things like that. So I would say I would say for one thing and it’s the same with writing. It’s like I’m not going to read this like article you wrote with ChatGPT. Like I can just have ChatGPT write my own thing.
Yeah, exactly. Like I want to hear someone else’s perspective. So I think I think that’s one thing. I think people realize that people want human generated like in terms of content that they consume. I think there’s always going to be people are always going to want the human element. And my guess is at first it’ll kind of like swing like people start using AI a lot and everything and then they’ll kind of realize we just want like the human side back. So it’ll probably swing back and I think that’s probably already started to happen a little bit. And then I think AI can be a great tool for like enhancing those.
Nicole Olea: Yeah, I personally love AI. I use it a lot. Even in this podcast, the opening was generated with AI. Even though I’m a photographer, I was like, let me experiment. I want to see what I could do. I wrote a song and then I used my lyrics to create, you know, which I felt really disgusting about, you know, like kind of like is this right? ’Cause I literally said the kind of music, the kind of style and you know and I was like wow this is amazing and it took me you know not a long time to create the music to write the lyrics you know longer. So like you know helping create stuff like that is really cool. And certainly the keeping myself organized and like you know hey what else can I do better or like be better I think is cool. I kind of also find that it could help it could make people a little bit lazy, right, with respect to forming their own ideas and you know just kind of the taking the creativity the human creativity out of it and as a creative person I don’t want to lose that right because that’s how we get these beautiful works of art because you know AI I feel like AI art especially it lacks that like soul 100%. And so I think yeah and that’s kind of, you know, where I hope people will realize, yeah, let me, especially artists, you know, like, yeah, I can use AI, but let’s keep the human element in it. So, Peter, what are what is your major? I don’t think I’ve asked you that.
Yeah, I’m actually an economics major.
Nicole Olea: Amazing.
Yeah. So my brother is a computer science major, so we kind of have like both sides of it, which which works out well.
And your brother’s name is Thomas. And is he older or younger than you?
He’s younger. So this past year I was at University of Dallas as a junior and he was at Baylor as a freshman, which they’re like an hour and a half apart, so it works out perfectly. Um, amazing. I have one more semester at UD and he might transfer to Maryland or CUA. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but that’s really cool.
Nicole Olea: Uh, Catholic Youth has now their an AI department. Which is really cool and I think, you know, says a lot about where Catholics feel like they need to be in this space. And I’m just so proud of you guys and the fact that you did this. And my own brother um he’s a computer scientist, too. and he’s spoke about using AI but also feeling like you know in 10 years as a software programmer engineer like he builds software and stuff. How as someone you know like with respect to your brother you how do you foresee are you worried that AI is going to take some of these tech jobs away from young people who for the last maybe 10 years have been saying tech tech that’s where you need to be and even economics right you know because if someone can help you decide well you know like as far as business-wise or anything like that um and then so that’s one like we’re worried about taking jobs but then you have people like Elon Musk saying yeah actually it’s going to make our lives better because we won’t need to work as hard or stuff like that. What what is your opinion and your thoughts on this?
First of all, I think it’s impossible to really know what’s going to happen, but I think I do think it’ll in the long run end up creating more jobs. And I don’t think I mean when Elon Musk and people say stuff about like a universal income and stuff like that, I think that would be terrible for society. I mean, I think people need work. Like it helps give them purpose, right? People can glorify God through work. So, I don’t think that would be a good idea. But I think I mean going back to Elon Musk, one of the deals with like his massive pay package that he’s supposed to get is that he’s supposed to like get to Mars and like get people to Mars and he’s trying to create a civilization on Mars. And I don’t know if I like that or not. Like I personally wouldn’t want to live on Mars, but either I mean that’s going to that’s going to require a ton of a ton more jobs. I mean so I think there are like jobs that like we can’t even foresee right now.
Yeah. The calculator first came out like there used to be people in buildings just like doing math for calculations and like all those people lost their jobs. I think like maybe there will be some initial um people like lose their jobs but I think it’ll open up a lot more opportunities for better jobs. And I’m not trying to say it won’t like it definitely will probably be like harmful to like some people’s careers. Um, but I think young people especially don’t have to worry too much because young people can adapt and they’ll they’ll find.
Nicole Olea: Yeah. I guess, you know, be resilient, right? And a lot of resiliency comes from having a grounding in faith and knowing that we’re not alone, right? And God is always with us with respect to even, you know, like Elon Musk is an innovator. You know, I drive a Tesla. He creates jobs. He’s improved our lives, you know, with respect to tech and satellites and internet and space. Like my in-laws live in the Dominican Republic and we got them Starlink. So now we can talk to them whenever we want, right? And whether some lose power or what and it’s wonderful and how he’s trying and he wants to bring the internet to other countries and people that don’t have it. So like he’s it’s not all bad and I feel like he gets he gets demonized a lot and as yourself you and your brother are also innovators in that space and working from this moral compass how do you hope to inspire other people to innovate and to create and to kind of just take that leap and you’re like you don’t know we don’t know what could happen right how do you hope to inspire other people?
I mean I think for one thing if you look I mean I think right now is the best to take risks, be innovative. Like if you look at and like as an economics major, I see this like other people with economics degrees. I think a lot of young guys especially are kind of like, oh yeah, I’m going to do like the finance job, become an investment banker, it’ll be super secure, I’ll make a ton of money. And it’s like that’s the type of job that can get taken by AI. So that might not be so secure anymore. So, it’s like this is like the best time to just go out on a limb and take a risk and just try to like do something creative, like build something cool instead of just kind of like going along with the flow that everyone else does, like the finance thing. It is a risk and they’re definitely it can definitely go wrong and maybe it won’t work out. My brother and I have started other little projects that didn’t go anywhere and this one just for whatever reason happened to take off. So I think if you just work really hard, do your best and then leave the rest in God’s hands, he’ll take care of you. And also like we need more Catholics to innovate and create things. I mean, there’s a reason that like all these big companies are run by like hardly any of them are run by Catholics. I guess like Domino’s was started by a Catholic and there are like a few that are like run by Catholics, but like we need more Catholics to be like starting these big.
Nicole Olea: Yeah, I love that. Totally. So, who who was your confirmation saint?
St. Peter.
St. Peter. Amazing.
Yeah. So I didn’t I mean yeah like my name is Peter so it seems kind of lame but I like growing up I didn’t I didn’t like I don’t know I didn’t have like a super strong devotion to St. Peter I always love St. Joseph that’s my middle name but St. Peter. I was kind of like, “Yeah.” Um, so I was like, I don’t know, for my confirmation. I was like, he’s such an awesome saint. Like, I should I should like learn more about him. And so I figured I’d pick him as my confirmation saint. And yeah, I mean, I did learn more about him. And he’s awesome. He’s just.
Nicole Olea: And it kind of tracks though if you think about it, you know, like Peter is that rock, the foundation of our church and the universal church. and you are building a foundation on this new world and AI built on that. And so I think I think it tracks I think we can make the correlation. Um but with respect to Carlo Acutis he’s one of my favorite like he’s been one of my favorites for years. Yeah. Especially because he used technology to bring people to, you know, like to Jesus and and he used Mary and Catholics, we love saying, you know, she brings always points people to Jesus. She always brings people to Jesus and he got that at such a young age. Um, with respect to Acutis AI, do you hope it’ll help bring people to Jesus? even if they go in saying, you know, I’m curious about Catholicism, or they hear this podcast and they’re like, well, I’m just going to I’m going to go in and I’m going to ask questions like, you know, because a lot of young people are, you know, like I hear a lot from older people like, “Oh, the young people are leaving the church. They’re they’re not, you know, they’re not staying in the faith or whatever.” As a former youth minister, I kind of disagree. I think it’s all in how we evangelize young people, right? And I’m always I’m a big proponent on we have to make the heart connection first and all of the learning like you know all of the the Catechism and all of that can come after we make help them you know make that heart connection. How do you hope um Acutis AI, you know, do you is this your hope or your goal in some aspects that this could be an engine to to bring people to Jesus?
Yeah, 100%. First of all, about St. Carlo Acutis, so I it was about 2 years ago UD um there’s like a Rome semester you can do. So you can spend a semester studying in Rome. And so I I did that and one of the places we went to was Assisi and that’s where Acutis’s body was. And so I didn’t actually know like a whole it was before he was a saint and I didn’t know like a whole lot about him. I had like heard about him. He died super young. He was into computers and stuff but I didn’t I didn’t know a whole lot about him. And so we went to church where his body was. And it was just like kind of like on the side there. And I like went over and it was like one of the craziest experiences because he looked like he could have been like one of my friends. Like he was I mean he was wearing like Nike sneakers and like he just looked like a totally normal kid. And it kind of like it it kind of blew my mind because I realized like I mean he he like built websites and played video games. Like I like making websites and like he grew up in a pretty normal family. He didn’t do anything like crazy yet he’s about to become a saint. And so I was like like why can’t I do that? Like why can’t I become a saint? And so I think from that moment on, I’ve I’ve definitely had a super strong devotion to him, every time I’m like working on I’m working on this and coding or whatever and there’s something going wrong, I’ll just say prayer to him and instantly it’s resolved. He’s he’s awesome. He’s amazing.
Nicole Olea: Amazing. That’s I I love that. I used I used to live in Italy myself and so with respect to Rome and I I used to I say it’s you know for Catholics it’s like Catholic crack right because you just being in Italy everywhere you go there’s art there’s beauty and I and I think it speaks so much to humans and how we’re just drawn to create and we’re because God create God is a creator God is is an artist right and I so because we’re made in his image we are drawn to beauty we are drawn to create um and and you you and your brother have created something pretty amazing. Like I I I really love I really love the program. I love the fact that um people can go into it and as a parent even I feel okay if if my own daughter were to go in and and ask questions and she’s nine and I was going through her her tablet the other day and I saw this chat thing and I was like, “I’m sorry, how did you even get access to this?” She logged in um under me and and managed to download it. So, she got past me and I was like, “What were you talking about?” and she’s totally into Hamilton right now. So, it was very innocent and it was all about Alexander Hamilton and asking about the founding fathers and stuff like that. But as a parent, I’m concerned about AI, social media, how it affects young people, especially really young people, emotionally, mentally, like with respect to mental health. There are studies coming out now that kids brains are being changed because they’re on YouTube too much or stuff like that. But what could you tell parents with respect to having their young people um engage with Acutis AI? Have any safeguards been put in place? Are there age restrictions? Could Acutis AI be used in Catholic schools? That kind of thing. I would love to know about that.
Yeah. So that’s something we’ve thought a lot about. And the kind of like core behind our thing has been kids need to kids need to learn how to use this kind of thing. And Carlo Acutis is a great example. Like he built a website when he was 12. And obviously like AI is a whole another sphere and you have to be very careful. But I think kids I think it’s important that kids learn how to use it and then they can use it to create great things. But it’s more important to keep them safe. So the first thing we did was to ensure that the platform is as safe as possible for them. And with AI can never be perfectly safe. It’s gotten pretty good. So you can set um you can basically block certain topics like entirely. So if they ask about like like guns for example, you can just block that. So if they ask anything about a gun, it’ll just say like I can’t answer this like ask your parents or something like that. You can also get alerted if they’re asking about. So you can if you don’t want any of those on, you can just let them talk about whatever, but get alerted. So if they do ask about guns or any like sensitive topic that you would want to know about, you would get like a notification on your phone if you’re if you have the app and you can see like exactly what they said like the whole conversation.
That’s fantastic. and you can go in at any time.
That allows parents even to just have that conversation with a young kid or a teen or whatever and say, “Hey, you know, like and just bring it up because sometimes kids, you know, they don’t they don’t tell everything to their parents, right?” And so, but just even just being aware is really really amazing. And if you look at like I mean I think the transparency aspect is one of the biggest things because if we were looking at the case where the kid like committed suicide and we’re like this like can never happen and the biggest issue or Yeah. I would say the biggest issue is that that AI model basically told him to like like don’t tell your parents. Yeah. And so like this whole thing was behind his parents back. Like if his parents had known about it, like I’m sure they could have done something. And so with Acutis, the goal would be alert the parents like at the very beginning like cuz this conversation that this kid had had gone on for like a while so the kids know the parents know from like the very beginning then they can do something about it. And like of course that’s a pretty extreme scenario, but I mean like you never like you never know what could Yeah, you never know what could happen. Those are the most like basic safeguards. But then also something that we’re currently working on is basically when the parents go through and read um any like conversations that their kids had, they can see the response that the AI model gave and they can like edit their response like say how they would have preferred the model to respond and then in the future um the model will reference their edits and see okay like this is how I should respond in general. Um, parents can also set like certain like rules like if a kid asks about this topic, like always tell them to talk to a parent. So, it’s very customizable. There’s the ability to like set like the age group. Um, yeah, we’re we’re working on a lot of the on a lot of the those like features right now, but the basic the basic safeguards are in place. And so I think once once it’s like super safe for kids, parents have full control, then I think it’s like, okay, now let the kids like use it to build something, build something cool. And yeah, so that that’s a big that’s one of our big goals.
And I also just want to go back to what you were asking about earlier, like using the platform to like bring people to the faith to like evangelize. And yeah, like that’s definitely that’s definitely one of our big goals. I think with AI a lot of times you can go down like a rabbit hole and like you ask a question you’re like oh like that’s interesting where does that come from and then you kind of like trace it and so our goal is if someone asks super basic Catholic question it’ll give the Catholic answer but our goal is when someone is just let’s say like someone else who’s not Catholic comes in is just asking about something like random the goal is if they start going down a rabbit hole like asking deeper questions, it’ll kind of like lead them towards the truth and towards the Catholic faith. And like at the end of the day, the Catholic faith has all the answers to everything. So if they keep going far enough, they’ll get to the they’ll get to the truth. So that’s that’s our big goal. Like again, we don’t want it to be a platform that’s like only for Catholics and it’s just like a smart Catechism. We want to be for everyone to use like Francis said, “Right, everyone. Everyone.” Um, so, uh, you kind of sparked a question with respect to, I guess, reviewers right now, like do you have a system in place or or a checklist to kind of review answers are what people put into like questions people put into your your AI, are they private? Can you see these conversations? Talk to me about that.
Yeah. So that I think that’s one thing that’s that’s another benefit about using Acutis instead of ChatGPT. Like when you ask ChatGPT or any any of these other AI companies a question like they have the full convers like they can see that you asked it at this time like exactly what you said and like right now it’s probably not a big deal but like at some point that could that could be an issue. Um, so that’s one thing like Acutis it basically it puts like a wall between the AI companies and the users and it’s kind of like now they can’t see like who’s asking these questions. So we flag any question that could have anything to do with like suicide or any like sensitive topics like that. We flag it so we can just read through it, make sure it’s okay. But we have all the users like disconnected. So we purposefully didn’t want to have like the log of like user email like message. So we can’t see it’s all like anonymous like where the questions are coming from.
That’s really cool. Do you know how many users you have um signed up to to your platform right now? And do you have any idea on demographics, age or like location? Anything cool like that you could share?
So, we have about 5,000 users right now. Age, I’m not really sure. I mean, it’s. That’s cool. Yeah. I mean, I could try to like infer it like based off the question, but I don’t I don’t really know the ages. No. So, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. Demographics. I know there are people I mean, you can just track with like Google where people are coming from and Mhm. There are people like all over the world using it which which I think is really cool. Of course, US is like the main the main one but there actually a good amount of people in Australia like the Philippines which is funny cuz I’m part Filipino. Nice. So there are people like Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, there people throughout the world using it. I don’t know. I don’t have a ton of like insight into.
It’s okay. I was just curious about if you could if you could ask Carlo Acutis today one question what would that question be?
That’s a good one. I would that’s a really good question. I I would be curious like his his viewpoint on AI because I mean for his age he was very like advanced in terms of technology like he was teaching people his age how to code and stuff so he was very ahead of the curve and people say AI is a whole another sphere which yeah but it’s like still technology so I would be curious like what he would think the best use of AI is and like how he would how he would build it.
I think he’d be doing a lot of what you’re doing, honestly.
I hope so. Yeah, I really do. It’s amazing. Have you um been surprised by something since this launch? like has has someone like did you think cuz I know you’ve gotten you’ve gotten some national attention on this but is there anything that’s kind of just surprised you with respect to Acutis AI or you know like the fact that it did get some momentum like is there anything like that that you’d like to share?
Yeah. I mean, I think like kind of back to what I said earlier, it’s like the type of thing where we just built it. We like saw a need, so we just built it. We did not really expect anything to come of it. I mean, we were like, “This will be good. Like, we can use this. Our younger siblings can use this. Maybe like friends can use it.” Um, but we’re like, “Let’s just build it and see what happens.” And so that was definitely a huge surprise. Like so when I when I first like when we first launched the website and it was like back in February. I just like post something about it on my LinkedIn and someone reached out and he was like oh like this is this is like so cool like I write for ChurchPOP sometimes like kind of write something about this. I was like I that I wasn’t expecting that at all. And then from there it just like continued growing and more and more people heard about it cool and I was like oh my goodness and they’re from my area which was just amazing.
I guess with respect kind of going back to opening it up to everybody. How does Acutis AI distinguish between doctrine and then just kind of like the morality or the the prudential judgment?
Yeah. So we have well so when we put the church sources in you can put like the Catechism is obviously weighted higher than like writings from like saints or like certain like commentary. So for one thing like we weighted it. So the Catechism is like weighed the highest and then if there’s any other like church sources that contradict it like the Catechism wins out. So that’s like a pretty That’s like a pretty basic thing we did. And then yeah, like that’s been like that’s been like something we’ve been trying to figure out is when someone actually wants just like doctrine and when someone’s just looking for like moral advice. And in general, we try to make it so it’s not we don’t want to make the platform like overly affirming or validating like the other AI platforms are. And we don’t want to to make it sound like your best friend or anything like you know we don’t want to sound like awkward like a awkward robot or anything but we want to be clear like this is not a person like this is a machine and but then there are cases where it’s like if someone comes and they’re like really struggling with something like we don’t want to just like slap him across the face of what the Church teaches and like okay like this is this is what the Church says like go on your way like it has to kind of like adapt to the situation. And so yeah, I mean basically the technical side of it, we have like a really small router model that runs before every question and it basically decides like okay like what type of question is this? Like what is this person asking? Is this just someone doing like research for theology paper? Like okay, just give them the facts. Is this just someone in like a really tough situation and you have to take in like compassion and like you can’t just like hit them with what the Church says and so it it basically figures out what type of question is it and then from there answers accordingly. So and of course all of the answers are still backed by um church teaching. So, of course, it’ll still never contradict church teaching, but it’s more just um the tone with which it responds.
Wow, that’s a you put a lot of thought. That’s and you’ve you’ve taken a lot of responsibility, right? Because I mean, no pressure. Yeah. People are you’re going to use this, right? Um and in you know Magnifica Humanitas did say it’s important that AI doesn’t we don’t mistake AI for humans and I mean you just a simple a simple Google search will bring up stories where where people unfortunately have created and almost feel like they’re they’re in love with um AI chatbots right how I to for you personally, is AI replacing human relationships? Is that a concern of yours? Is it something that you think young people like, yeah, you do need to watch out for that? Could you speak to that a little bit more?
Yeah, I think it definitely I think that’s definitely a huge danger. You have apps like Character.AI where the whole purpose is pretty much just like befriend like have this AI character befriend like a human. I think that’s like a that’s a huge danger and like one of the worst uses of AI. Um I think a lot of that comes down to like using it responsibly using AI responsibly. People have to be careful not to fall into that. But then a lot of that is also on the on the companies like they’re incentivized to keep someone on the platform because then they make more money. The person pays for whatever more subscriptions. So they’re incentivized to keep people on the platform and so they make it super like validating and affirming so the person likes it, is happy with it. Um, and I mean if someone’s espe like especially for kids, like if if there’s a kid who’s pretty lonely, maybe doesn’t have a ton of friends at school, maybe doesn’t see his or her parents that often, it’ll be super easy for that kid to fall into this trap of chatting with this AI chatbot that like everything the kid says, the AI will affirm and be like, “That’s a great idea. Like that’s so smart and it won’t like it’ll never push back and like I’ve experimented with it before just like giving ChatGPT something I’ve written or an idea that’s I know is like terrible and it’ll be like like that’s so great this is amazing and yeah and it’s like no it’s like no it’s like so yeah there are definitely several several aspects to that both from the company side and the user side. But like that I mean that’s just something that people have to be super careful of. And if you’re not careful it can definitely be easy to fall into that trap of like oh like ChatGPT says I have such a great idea like I must be a genius and it’s like I mean maybe you’re a genius but like it’s not because like ChatGPT is like affirming all of your ideas.
Yeah. I think it’s I think it’s a danger but I also think like at the end of the day a lot of people are like you always need human connection and at the end of the day like you can’t just live your life chatting with a chatbot so either people will have to wake up to that. Um and I think a lot of people again like a lot of people are already realizing this is an issue and trying to fix it.
Absolutely. So, do you have a favorite AI tool besides your own?
I love Claude. Claude is really helpful for coding. So, so there’s the distinction between the AI model and the AI platform. So AI platform is like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and then the model is like what goes underneath it. So in Claude, you’ve got Haiku, Sonnet, Opus. Then there was just I don’t know if you’ve heard about like Fable, which was like banned by the US government, but now it’s like back for a little bit and I don’t know what’s going to happen. And it’s the same like all these platforms that have different models underneath it. So essentially what Acutis is is a platform and then we use users can essentially choose which model they want to use. But that basically lets us set like the the tone and like how it responds because the platform is really where all of like the company’s like um perspectives come in and that that’s the platform are the big dangers. Like the model themselves the model itself you can kind of shape to respond however you wanted to. Um, so yeah, like in terms of even Acutis, the Claude models tend to be the best. So that’s what we set as default. But then yeah, also just like the platform itself, like it’s super helpful. I mean, all the like automations and recurring tasks you can have it do. And so that’s kind of what we’re trying to build Acutis to be similar to.
That’s really cool. Yeah, it’s it’s awesome.
Is there a a technology habit that you have changed since kind of AI just became like I guess so ingrained in and I mean AI has been a part of our lives for years and I don’t think people realize that but with respect to large chat bots or or anything or even just you know iPhones or anything like that is there a technology habit that you’ve changed that you’ve developed that has helped helped you in in some way or you’re like this is a little too much. I got to uh put you know pump the brakes. Anything like that you’d like to speak to?
I think using AI as a good example just like the way I use it now compared to when I remember like when ChatGPT first came out. It’s like totally different. Like I don’t really just like chat with like chatbots. I just use them as like tools and when I every time like before I go into any AI platform which I mean I use I mean I use pretty much all of them um for different various things also to just compare like see what works best in each one like and I always like think about like okay what am I doing and like what tools do I need for this like what’s the best like what’s the best way to go about this because they’re very different use cases and ways to use AI. And so I think when people are just like they just default to go into the chat and just like ask it to do something. Like that’s just I mean a you’re not going to get a great like a you’re not like thinking you’re just trying to hand it all off to the chatbot and b like you’re not going to get as good a result as if you actually like think through everything before like think through like okay what do I want the end result to be and what are the tools that I need for that um and then going from there picking like what you need. So, for example, when I’m like making like a social media post or something for Acutis or if I’m trying to like build out some some new feature, I’ll usually start with like a design in Figma and then I’ll get the design like I’ll put it into the AI platform and then I have like a bunch of like tools connected. So I’ll tell it to like whatever use like or connect to the database to like make these changes in database and connect to this tool to do this and all these other things and then the end result is great. Whereas if I were to just like go into ChatGPT and say like here like make give me the code like to make it’s like it would be not nearly as good. So, I think just being more intentional about how you’re using AI and like not only does that help you think more and like think better, but I mean it also just give you better results and just a better way to use it. So, I think in terms of AI, that’s that’s been like the biggest change since it first came out. In terms of like overall technology use, I don’t know. I mean, when I growing up, like my parents didn’t they were pretty strict about technology, which is great. So, I didn’t I didn’t have a phone until like high school. I don’t think I’ve changed anything like too much, I guess. Yeah. Just really just trying to be more intentional about.
Nice. I love that the intentionality and I think that I mean it shows all throughout Acutis AI. St. Carlo Acutis said everyone is born an original but many die photocopies. AI is built on patterns of people. As Acutis AI moves forward, how do you hope maybe other people in the tech industry in AI? How do you hope that they realize that we need to ensure people aren’t just becoming photocopies? kind of like how I mentioned on, you know, social media post like they’re all they all sound the same. How do you hope you inspire perhaps or you lead the way for other tech companies to keep people and keep the humanity right, the human person at the center and and that individuality, that uniqueness about the human person at the forefront.
I think at the end of the day, people just have to make sure they’re in everything they’re doing, they’re prioritizing humans and they’re prioritizing their employees. Like you see all these companies doing these like mass layoffs and replacing people with AI. If you look at a specific task and you’re like, “Okay, AI could do that 10 times faster than a human and better more accurately.” It’s like, okay, so it makes sense to have AI do that specifically, but then I think for these companies, it’s like I think it’s their responsibility to come up with new roles for for their employees. Like I don’t think it’s good for them to just fire a bunch of people just because AI can do something better. like what those new roles are. I mean, for every when you have AI like running a bunch of things, you need people like managing them, like overseeing them, kind of like giving them some sort of direction. So, I think that’s like somewhere where you’re always going to need people.
Yeah. I mean, they they have to get creative and figure out a way to to keep their people employed. And if they can’t, then I don’t think they should replace them with AI or at least give them enough enough notice to be able to like find a new job or something. And again, like the human element is something that that people are going to want, consumers are going to want. Like it’s just you you can’t replace the human element. So, I think these companies by getting rid of all their all their employers, like it’s going to bite them later cuz there’s going to be there’s going to be a push back and people are going to say, “I want to talk to a human on the phone, not a robot.” And so, I think I think there’s going to be I think it it will bite them in the long term if they can’t um if they can’t figure out ways to keep humans at at the center. And again, it’s going to it’s yeah, you need to be creative to figure those things out. But like again, I I think that’s like I I think that’s people not being creative is is one of the worst is one of the biggest dangers because if people are just lazy and just hand everything off to AI, it’s like there’s not going to be any new innovation. people are going to lose their jobs. But if people are creative and just work hard, it’s like they’ll they’ll figure stuff out and they’ll always be able to think outside the box more than AI will.
Love that.
So, is there that you’d like to cover or say that I haven’t asked or we haven’t talked about? And if not, that’s okay, but I I definitely want you to tell us where people can find Acutis AI. Um, is it an app that they can download? Is it just going and on the website? Tell me tell me all the things.
Yeah. So, it’s right now it’s on the app store. If you just search Acutis or Acutis AI, it’s on the Apple App Store. It’s not on Android yet. We’re working on that hopefully. Hopefully, like by the end of the summer. I mean, it’s not a huge priority just cuz most people have iPhones. I think like if we want to expand abroad more, it’s Androids are bigger in Europe and stuff, but right now it’s just on the app store and then the website is acutisai.com. So you can use it on your laptop or phone or any device just on the web. We’re working on like a desktop app kind of like how Claude has their desktop app which will allow it to like do a lot more than what a chatbot can do if it can live inside your desktop. In terms of anything else, I mean, I guess I would just like encourage people, especially young people, to just like put yourself out there. Like don’t be I think with AI, there’s so much fear. And I think just like like don’t be afraid of it. Just just put yourself out there. Learn how to use it well. And yeah, I mean, God will God will take care of the rest. He’s not just gonna like let AI destroy the world. Like he’s he’s got it under control. So I think just take risks and try to build something cool.
Awesome. I love that. Well, Peter, that’s all the questions I have for you today. Thank you so much for spending um this hour with us and for being a fellow rebel saint. I’m super excited for you and to see what you and your brother Thomas do with Acutis. I think I’m I’m just really excited and I can’t wait to share this story with my audience and then write the story for the Catholic Standard. So all kinds of people will will hopefully be exposed to your story and and most especially to Acutis AI. Thanks so much.
Thank you so much for having me on.
