💡 Claude has a priest and he's Irish

Céad míle fáilte!

As a young professional trying to pave a path for myself in the big bad world, I often ask myself, ‘what are the jobs that won’t be wiped out within the next 3-5 years by Artificial Intelligence?’

A contender for the most bulletproof answer to that question is ‘Claude’s Priest’.

Niche, I know. But, hard to replace? Very.

That is the title that some have dubbed Irishman Fr Brendan McGuire. The parish priest of Silicon Valley, no less. (You should see the collection boxes every Sunday – big spenders).

Some of you may have seen Adrian Weckler’s incredible interview this week on The Big Tech Show with Fr McGuire, or Finn Murphy’s sit down with him below.

As the debate around the ethics and dangers of AI continues, the role of faith in the future of the technology seems to be popping up more and more. 

Irish priests are playing a unique role in that. Is there any reason why?

Let’s have a little dive into it.

Our Father who art in Silicon Valley

Fr Brendan McGuire has one of the most interesting LinkedIn profiles I have come across.

He studied at Presentation College Bray from 1969 to 1982 and went to Trinity for his undergrad before completing a masters in Computer Software Engineering.

A mere 5 years later he was doing his Master of Divinity in Theological Studies and on his way to becoming a priest. A bit of a change up.

He described himself as growing up in an entrepreneurial household, with two of his brothers setting up one of Ireland’s big success stories in Trintech. Fr McGuire himself moved to Silicon Valley to set up his own company after college.

But as outlined in his interview with Weckler, he said he always had a love of liturgy and the church and wanted to devote his life to priesthood more than become a millionaire entrepreneur.

I’m sure many of you founders are reading that in disbelief. But cast your mind back to the Ireland he grew up in.

Conversion

Back in 1971, the census found that 94% of the population reported themselves as Roman Catholic. Another study in 1973, found that 90% of Irish Catholics said they attended mass on a weekly basis. So not just identifying as religious, putting in the hard yards for it too.

That has changed a lot. In the 2022 Census, 69% of the population reported themself as Roman Catholic. The percentage of Mass-goers on a weekly basis is at 31%, according to recent figures.

All the while Catholicism was in the decline, Ireland was quitely becoming one of the most digitally advanced economies in the world.

Fuelled by the impact the IDA was having on the economy and becoming a member of the EEC (EU) in 1973, we were starting to see more economic growth.

Fast forward to today and 16 of the world’s top 20 companies operate hubs in Ireland, with over 100,000 people employed in tech. 

And when it comes to the hot topic of Artificial Intelligence, we are also among the highest to adopt AI. A reported 48.6% of Irish workers use AI for at least 90 minutes per month, according to a Microsoft study, placing us in the top 5 countries globally.

Fr McGuire grew up in Ireland while it was ‘converting’ from an old-school Catholic country to a new more modern one.

This odd period of change produced a devout priest with a masters degree in software engineering. How many others fit into the middle of that venn diagram?

It’s Coming Rome

Pope Leo hilariously recently pleaded with priests not to use AI for their homilies. But that was not his only contrbution to the whole ‘AI debate’.

He published his ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ Encyclical, which called for AI to serve humanity and warned of it’s dangers. Christopher Olah, Anthropic’s co-founder, spoke at the launch of the encyclical in a kind of weird ‘The Vatican X Anthropic’ style product launch.

At the heart of all the Vatican’s AI shenanigans is another Irish priest. Naomi O’Leary’s article in the Irish Times details how Bishop Paul Tighe became a key contributor to Pope Leo’s efforts on AI.

Tighe, a Meath man, moved to Rome in 2007 to help make the church more digital and helped set up the Papal Twitter account. (I personally think they should post more memes to boost engagement.)

More recently, in 2016, he was present at a meeting when tech billionaires came to alert the church of the potential dangers of AI. From that point, Tighe became a key cog in the relationship between Silicon Valley and Catholicism HQ in Rome, with regular ‘business trips’ to California.

Looking to the west coast of America wasn’t unnatural to Tighe. Growing up, his dad worked for the IDA and helped pave the way for those big tech companies to set up in Ireland, shaping the tech-led economy we now have.

His trips to Silicon Valley also led him to meet the aforementioned Fr Brendan McGuire, who told him how he “had many parishioners who were working in the Silicon Valley companies, who were anxious to harmonise their work and their faith.”

Amen

Some of you may be wondering after reading all this, ‘are they about to launch an ‘Irish Priests in AI’ list as a follow on to their brilliant ‘Irish AI 50’?

The answer is of course no.

I also appreciate that a lot of people will hold negative views towards religion and ask ‘why the hell would we want religious leaders involved in shaping AI ethics?’

But this debate on the ethics of AI is raging and all of the heavy hitters are involved in this, including religion.

Given the importance the companies, like Anthropic, are putting on institutions like The Vatican, they are getting a unique front row seat onto all the updates that are coming.

And if nothing else, it’s a fascinating story of two Irishmen working with some of the biggest leaders in AI.

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