The risks that keep AI researchers up at night are not the ones making the headlines.

Not Terminator. Not Skynet. Something more plausible — and more urgent: a virus engineered by AI to combine transmissibility and lethality. Nuclear escalation triggered by an algorithm. A slow, decades-long erosion of human control over the decisions that shape civilization.

Benjamin Crockett sits down with John-Clark Levin, Research Lead at Kurzweil Technologies, William Jones of the Future of Life Institute, and Fr. Michael Baggot, L.C., Professor of Bioethics at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum — to examine what it will take to navigate the AI moment responsibly, and what the Catholic Church uniquely brings to that conversation.

From the GUARD Act to AI companionship to the possibility of Pope Leo playing a mediating role between the US and China, the episode asks the question that Silicon Valley cannot answer: who speaks for the 8 billion people who have no vote in what risks are imposed on them?

• Why AI is grown, not designed — and what that means for safety
• Biorisk: the scenario that requires no speculative leap
• Autonomous weapons and the pressure to compromise moral principles
• AI companionship and the crisis of human relationality
• The GUARD Act and the Catholic response
• Can Pope Leo mediate the AGI arms race?
• Hope in healthcare, education, and the Church