The Family Room - AI from a Catholic Perspective

Guest: Juan Perez, Salesforce Chief Information Officer AdvisorIs artificial intelligence, or AI, today’s equivalent of the Tower of Babel - the deliberate attempt by man to create a world that doesn’t need God? AI gathers unlimited data, stores it indefinitely, and retrieves it as needed. It processes information, but doesn’t understand the meaning behind it. It generates patterns, but doesn’t seek truthful statements. Since it has no soul, it’s not morally accountable for its output. What could go wrong?  Having been born to Catholic immigrants who fled Cuba in 1963, Juan Perez is acutely aware of the pitfalls of living without God. He entered the workforce during AI’s infancy and quickly realized not only its power, but also its potential for disaster. Like all technology, bad actors can abuse AI, and Perez set out to ensure there would be guardrails to help people avoid them. For example, he believes people need to know where the data comes from, and that their privacy remains private. Is the information manipulated or biased?As Catholic parents and grandparents, we must encourage our families to use AI responsibly, not run from it. Perez lays out a Catholic vision focusing on the opportunity to use Catholic social teaching as a framework for AI ethics.  Guest biography: Juan R. Perez is a Salesforce Chief Information Officer Advisor, previously serving as the Salesforce Chief Information Officer until his retirement in 2025. He joined Salesforce in 2022 following a thirty-two-year career in engineering and information services at UPS, where he served as Chief Information Officer and Engineering Officer from 2016 to 2022. Mr. Perez is a director of Wabtec Corporation and serves on the advisory boards of the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California and the School of Business at Georgia Tech. He holds a B.S. in Industrial and System Engineering from the University of Southern California and an M.S.in Computer and Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Southern California.  He and his family live in suburban Atlanta.  Resources:Juan Perez’ PRAYER FOR TECHNOLOGY:Loving Father, Holy Spirit, Jesus – Way, Truth, and Life.  Bless the use of our family’s technology to you. Bless the technology we use each day.  Bless our phones, the apps we use, our text messages, our posts, our photos, and our every conversation.  Bless our computer, the work we do on it, the games we play, the email we write, the email we send, and the YouTube videos we share. Bless our iPads, our iPods, our Kindles, our NUCs, our Game Boys, and our Nintendos. Bless our keyboards and remotes, our WiFi, our televisions, our media viewing, and our media sharing. Thank you for having inspired humanity to discover all the new technology that we use for conversation, for friendship, for family communication, for work, for enjoyment, for education, and for our spiritual uplifting. You created everything for us as we are for Christ.  Many of these inventions; may they be the ones that give You glory and help bring peace to humanity.  Amen