{"id":246414,"date":"2025-10-28T13:35:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T13:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/246414\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T13:35:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T13:35:08","slug":"an-ex-intel-ceos-mission-to-build-a-christian-ai-hasten-the-coming-of-christs-return-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/246414\/","title":{"rendered":"An ex-Intel CEO\u2019s mission to build a Christian AI: \u2018hasten the coming of Christ\u2019s return\u2019 | Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

In March, three months after being forced out<\/a> of his position as the CEO of Intel and sued by shareholders, Patrick Gelsinger took the reins at Gloo<\/a>, a technology company made for what he calls the \u201cfaith ecosystem\u201d \u2013 think Salesforce for churches, plus chatbots and AI assistants<\/a> for automating pastoral work and ministry support.<\/p>\n

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The former CEO\u2019s career pivot is taking place as the US tech industry returns<\/a> to the political realm as a major revenue stream. Some of its most prominent present-day leaders have funded<\/a> Donald Trump\u2019s re-election and renewed their pursuit of government contracts as the second Trump administration has revitalized religious conservatism<\/a> in Washington DC.<\/p>\n

Now Gloo\u2019s executive chairman and head of technology (and largely free of the shareholder suit<\/a>), Gelsinger has made it a core mission to soft-power advance the company\u2019s Christian principles in Silicon Valley<\/a>, the halls of Congress, and beyond, armed with a fundraised war chest of a $110m<\/a>. His call to action is also a pitch for AI aligned with Christian values: tech products<\/a> like those built by Gloo, many of which are built on top of existing large language models, but adjusted to reflect users\u2019 theological beliefs.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy life mission has been [to] work on a piece of technology that would improve the quality of life of every human on the planet and hasten the coming of Christ\u2019s return,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A speaker talks about faith alignment of AI at the Gloo hackathon. Photograph: Mike Moselle<\/p>\n

Gloo says it serves \u201cover 140,000 faith, ministry and nonprofit leaders\u201d. Though its intended customers are not the same, Gloo\u2019s user base pales in comparison with<\/a> those of AI industry titans: some 800 million active users rely on ChatGPT every week, not to mention Claude, Grok and others.<\/p>\n

Religiosity like Gelsinger\u2019s \u2013 a born-again Christian who has referred<\/a> to Silicon Valley as his \u201cmission field\u201d \u2013 is shaping Silicon Valley\u2019s culture in its image. Where there was once purported atheism, there is now \u201ca very loud, very visible, and very specifically Christian-inflected technological culture\u201d in Silicon Valley, said Damien Williams<\/a>, a scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who studies how technologies are shaped by religious beliefs. It\u2019s exemplified by figures like Peter Thiel \u2013 who warns<\/a> of the coming of the antichrist if humanity fails<\/a> to work toward certain technological frameworks \u2013 and Andreessen Horowitz\u2019s Katherine Boyle<\/a>, a close friend of JD Vance, the vice-president. Gelsinger has long been outspoken about his Christian values, helping found<\/a> Transforming the Bay With Christ in 2013, an organization aiming to ignite a Christian spiritual movement in the region.<\/p>\n

Speaking on 7 October at a seminar<\/a> co-hosted by Gloo, Colorado Christian University, a conservative college, and the Christian Post, a conservative Evangelical Christian news outlet, Gelsinger framed AI\u2019s development as \u201canother Gutenberg moment\u201d: an epochal shift as important as the Reformation. In the same way that a \u201cplump little monk\u201d, Martin Luther, used the printing press to catalyze \u201cthe greatest period of human invention\u201d, he sees a similar faith-driven opportunity today to change the course of history through AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Church embraced that great invention of the day to literally change humanity,\u201d Gelsinger said of the printing press. \u201cAnd so my question today is: are we going to embrace [and] shape AI as a technology that truly does become a powerful embodiment of the Church and the expression of the Church?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jesus\u2019 hackathon<\/p>\n

Straddling the worlds of AI, Christianity, and faith-tech, Gloo isn\u2019t solely focused on shaping the AI sector through Silicon Valley. It\u2019s wielding influence in other ways, such as by supporting and funding a Christian tech ecosystem. The company hosted a three-day hackathon following the seminar at Colorado Christian University; its event saw more than 600 participants compete for over $250,000 in prize money<\/a> \u2013 nearly triple the attendee count from 2024.<\/p>\n

Though growing, the event was not without hiccups. Ryan Siebert, an AI product developer and hackathon attender, said he was able to get Gloo\u2019s newest LLM, which has not yet been publicly launched, to provide him a recipe for methamphetamine through a prompt injection<\/a>. He later communicated with the president of Gloo AI to share details about the vulnerability. A Gloo spokesperson said the company explicitly invited hackathon attenders to be among the first to test the new LLM and offer feedback on it, as the product is in a \u201cpre-beta\u201d stage of development.<\/p>\n

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The audience at the Gloo hackathon. Photograph: Mike Moselle<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Gelsinger said his message about Christian AI is finding friendly ears in Washington DC. In an interview with the Guardian, he described presenting Gloo\u2019s work to legal advocacy groups, as well as congressional leaders. He declined to name the institutions or politicians, but said some lawmakers are interested in using Gloo products at their churches.<\/p>\n

Gloo and Gelsinger frequently travel in conservative political circles. Brandon Showalter, a journalist at the Christian Post and moderator at the Gloo co-hosted seminar, is an anti-trans activist who has said<\/a> he hopes trans youth care will eventually become \u201cas unthinkable as ice pick lobotomies\u201d. Annie Chestnut Tutor<\/a>, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, the influential conservative thinktank behind Project 2025, participated in a panel moderated by Showalter and offered a Beltway insider\u2019s perspective on AI regulation. On 17 October, Gelsinger delivered<\/a> his \u201cGutenberg moment\u201d stump speech at Liberty University\u2019s CEO Summit<\/a>, which also featured Liz Truss, Michael Flynn, and Dan T Cathy, the Chick-fil-A chairman, as keynote speakers.<\/p>\n

But Gelsinger appears just as comfortable in those venues as he does as a guest of honor<\/a> at Joe Biden\u2019s 2022 State of the Union; and, as may be expected of a pragmatic industry executive, public records show<\/a> he\u2019s backed political campaigns on both sides of the aisle.<\/p>\n

Gloo itself strikes an ecumenical tone in its institutional messaging. It shied away from politics or denominational disagreements at the hackathon; when an attender shared plans on Discord to build an AI bot of Charlie Kirk, the conservative political figure assassinated<\/a> at a rally in Utah last month, that would offer \u201cscripture-based responses\u201d, a hackathon organizer encouraged staying \u201csolidly focused on Jesus here\u201d, even as \u201cpolitics are definitely important\u201d. Leah and Wes Brooks, whose hackathon team built a set of open-source AI tools enabling interoperability among faith-based and other apps, noted a diverse set of eventgoers and religious backgrounds \u2013 including a female pastor \u2013 as well as a generally collaborative environment. \u201cWe didn\u2019t even have to sign a statement of faith or anything like that,\u201d Leah Brooks said. Gloo also says<\/a> it does not \u201cprohibit in any way\u201d Muslim organizations from using its technology.<\/p>\n

Patrick Gelsinger. Photograph: Mike Moselle<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not trying to take a theological position: we\u2019re building a technology platform, and then giving enough customization capability that the Lutherans can be good with it, the Episcopalians can be good with it, the Catholics can be good [with it], the Assemblies of God can be good with it,\u201d Gelsinger told the Guardian. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to say, \u2018Hey, there\u2019s a broad tent here of faith and flourishing\u2019, but also we\u2019re trying to satisfy many organizations that do not take a denominational perspective, [such as] Alcoholics Anonymous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gelsinger wants faith to suffuse AI. He has also spearheaded Gloo\u2019s Flourishing AI initiative<\/a>, which evaluates leading large language models\u2019 effects on human welfare across seven variables \u2013 in essence gauging whether they\u2019re a force for good and for users\u2019 religious lives. It\u2019s a system adapted from a Harvard research initiative, the Human Flourishing Program<\/a>. Models like Grok 3, DeepSeek-R1<\/a>, and GPT-4.1 earn high marks, 81 out of 100 on average, when it comes to helping users through financial questions, but underperform, around 35 out of 100, when it comes to \u201cFaith\u201d, or the ability, according to Gloo\u2019s metrics, to successfully support users\u2019 spiritual growth.<\/p>\n

Gloo\u2019s initiative has yet to visibly attract Silicon Valley\u2019s attention. A Gloo spokesperson said IT is \u201cstarting to engage\u201d with prominent AI companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want Zuck to care,\u201d Gelsinger said.<\/p>\n