"What AI Will Never Have" with Dr. Meghan Sullivan

Philosopher Meghan Sullivan, the Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame and director of the university's Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, joins Chris and Eddie for a conversation that starts with Socrates and ends up in a conference room at an AI company. Meghan traces her own path from an intentionally obscure grad-school dissertation on the nature of time to teaching "God and the Good Life," one of Notre Dame's most popular courses. From there the conversation turns to her current work on AI and human dignity, built around a framework she calls DELTA — Dignity, Embodiment, Love, Transcendence, Agency. Along the way: a thought experiment about an all-knowing "Guru app," a visit with Anthropic's engineering team, and her case for why she thinks this disruptive AI moment is exactly the moment the Christian tradition was built for.

Resources & Links:

The Good Life Method — Meghan Sullivan & Paul Blaschko (Penguin Press, 2022)
Time Biases — Meghan Sullivan (Oxford University Press, 2018)
The Human Delta (Meghan's Substack on AI and human dignity): https://aidelta.substack.com/
Notre Dame Institute for Ethics and the Common Good: https://ethics.nd.edu/people/meghan-sullivan/
Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, referenced in the conversation: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html

Transcript

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Chris McAlilly (00:02.339)
We're here today with Dr. Megan Sullivan, the Willsey Family Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute of Ethics and the Common Good at the University of Notre Dame. She is a leading voice at the intersection of philosophy, virtue ethics, and artificial intelligence. Megan, welcome to the podcast today.

Meghan Sullivan (00:22.85)
It's so great to be with you guys.

Eddie Rester (00:24.729)
It it's really great to have you with us and to to get to talk about some of the things we're gonna talk about today. But first of all, for folks who may not know you, know your work, give us a little just a little run-up. How did you end up at Notre Dame in philosophy as a Christian Catholic? I I mean, how did all that come to be?

Meghan Sullivan (00:46.991)
no, it's a it's a great question. I don't know how much how much time do you have, Eddie?

Eddie Rester (00:50.951)
Just if you could do that in twenty twenty five seconds, that would

Meghan Sullivan (00:54.496)
Of course. I yeah, I grew up in the South. We were joking off screen before we jumped on the podcast. I got this big corrupt the youth sign behind me in my office and if if my head's blocking the why it looks like corrupt the south. And I grew up I grew up in the in the dirty south in Greensboro, North Carolina. not a particularly academic family. My dad worked for this

worked part of the time in my childhood for this company called Replacements Limited, where like if you break a plate, like one of your wedding plates, they they give you the replacement. That's we were we were in the plate replacement industry. Absolutely, absolutely. And my my mom was a receptionist in a dental office. So when I went away to college at the University of Virginia and my sophomore year of college

Eddie Rester (01:30.988)
I I your dad has helped us out at times. So yeah, that's good.

Meghan Sullivan (01:47.438)
discovered two things simultaneously. They felt really different in my mind at the time, but you know, now now with hindsight realize that they were intimately connected. one, I discovered how much I love philosophy. I I had been, you know, kind of forced like many college freshmen against my will into a couple philosophy classes just because I couldn't register for the classes on making money that I really wanted.

and and so took some philosophy classes and realized how much I just absolutely love these questions and love this way of thinking about the world and and showed that I was pretty good at it as well. And so had gotten very invested in that in that kind of study when I was when I was early on in college. And I also came to faith early on in college, which is we can definitely talk more about that if you guys want.

But long story short, the same month the my junior year of college, I remember calling my calling Mary and Liam Sullivan and saying, just like heads up, I'm not going to law school. I'm gonna become a professional philosopher when I grow up, and I'm being received into the Catholic Church at Easter and this like four-hour dark you know, candlelit ceremony in the middle of the night. And you're you're welcome to come if you want. So I I had two like kind of really

big transformations in college. And one of the things that now as a college professor, I try to keep at the forefront of my mind is 18, 19 year olds might seem like they're they're superficial, but behind the scenes, oftentimes in that phase of life, there are huge decisions being made and in an interior life developing in really profound ways. I went the end of my time at UVA, I won a road scholarship to go up to Oxford.

Chris McAlilly (03:35.234)
Mm-hmm.

Meghan Sullivan (03:42.488)
So I went there and studied philosophy for two years right out of undergrad and had a had a really important time in England and then moved back to the US and moved to the university that is most unlike Oxford in the world, which is Rutgers University, the big public state university in New Jersey, which has a absolutely f fabulous philosophy department and is in the you know the big soprano style city of New Brunswick. And as I finished up at Rutgers, I got the

Tap on the shoulder from Notre Dame and came here fifteen years ago and I haven't looked back.

Eddie Rester (04:16.654)
There you go. Well, let me ask you because when I think of philosophy majors in college, I think about my friend Douglas, who entered college, khakis, polo shirts, you know, this kind of the stereotypical thing made ends up majoring in philosophy, and then he ends up real crunchy wearing Birkenstocks and and things, and talking in language sometimes that I didn't understand even. and so how what when we think philosophy, what's what's a basic

understanding your basic definition of what philosophy is, what does it hope to to do?

Meghan Sullivan (04:51.937)
it's so funny about your friend Douglas. If if you had told me when I was a high school senior that I would end up a philosophy professor, I would have like begged you to kill me. I I I most of my students have never met a philosopher before they take my class. But but when I was in high school, my best friend Jessica, her dad was actually a philosophy professor at our local UNC campus.

Eddie Rester (05:17.7)
UNC Greensboro, yeah.

Meghan Sullivan (05:18.995)
UNC Greensboro, UNCG. And I remember as like snotty, mean high school girls, we would make fun of him so much about like, you know, nobody ever understood what Jessica's dad was talking about, and he couldn't believe he had three degrees from an Ivy League university and then like w w wasn't making any money. and so I was very, very judgmental in high school and had this stereotype of a philosopher in my mind, which is, you know.

Eddie Rester (05:45.446)
Mm-hmm.

Meghan Sullivan (05:47.276)
smoke cigarettes, you wear a black beret, you're incomprehensible to the world. You're kind of apart from the world. And I really did like really hadn't was had no attraction to that when I was a young person. One of the reasons why I fell in love with philosophy classes when I was a college student is realizing that those stereotypes are wrong. I had some really wonderful facult professors. I remember the very first philosophy class I took.

Eddie Rester (05:52.944)
Yeah.

Meghan Sullivan (06:16.929)
was called Issues of Life and Death. And we would read like Supreme Court cases and news cases where people had to make a decision about whether or not to let someone live or whether or not somebody should be killed or be allowed to die. And then we had to just argue about what the correct decision would be in that scenario. And they were all real cases. And the very first essay topic the teacher assigned is would it be acceptable for you to kill yourself? And I remember going to the TA and thinking like,

What? Like are we allowed to talk about this? Like am I gonna get called into student life? And the TA's like, not only are you allowed to talk about this, but like you must. Like you have to if you wanna get a good grade in this class, you've gotta really take the readings that we've done. We've been reading like David Hume and we've been reading articles about assisted suicide and about mental health. And he's like, I want you to pr create a logically compelling case for your view on this position.

And then show all the objections to your view, and we're, and then me and the professor are gonna decide if your reasoning is strong enough. And I just remember getting that assignment. And meanwhile, my other professors and my other classes are asking me to write just like, what did a dead person think about X? What did a dead person think about Y? And this was the first time I had a class that that asked me to get my house in order, like to get my intellectual life in order. And I realized at that time, I like, my gosh, this is like one of the most

Chris McAlilly (07:39.661)
Yes.

Meghan Sullivan (07:42.648)
practical things you could be doing with your education compared with the other things I'm being asked to do. So I I like to tell my students that the philosophy in the Western world starts with Socrates in 400, 399 BC, he famously says that the unexamined life is not worth living and that the most important thing any of us can do for ourselves and for our friends is learn to care for our souls.

Like learn how to take care of your inner life, your mental life, your your heart. And philosophy, philosophical questions and reasoning is a discipline f that you learn that helps you in that effort. It's not the only way you care for your soul, but it's one key exercise and ingredient. And I've always been very deeply moved by that vision. And for, you know, twenty five hundred years, that's that's

been this tradition that survived the black plague, world wars, like all kinds of upheavals in human civilization has thought that one of the core tasks that we are constantly challenged to do is to get our house in order.

Chris McAlilly (08:54.014)
Yeah, one of the things that I notice is that when I look back at your C V is there are kind of these distinct moments where I mean, I guess what I hear you saying is that philosophy is a language of vocabulary a series of conversations and arguments about the nature of reality and how we live within it. and for you, it it seems like you moved in a a practical direction. Seems like the first phase, I mean, I think looking back at your, you know, kind of your

your PhD work, you were interested in time, kind of the nature of reality and how we live in time. And then you move into this conversation about human action in time that leads you, I think, to Aristotle and these conversations about the good life. I wonder kind of how you think about that. I am am I kind of reading the in intellectual journey that you're on correctly? You know, were you interested in questions of

of the re you know, philosophy as a as a way of getting to reality and then how it really it comes i it it moves in a kind of practical wisdom direction, it seems.

Meghan Sullivan (09:59.389)
absolutely. It's funny. This week at Notre Dame in the mornings, we've been hosting an academic workshop for philosophers. and many of these folks I've known since I was in graduate school. I mean, I've known them for 20 years, and so they've seen me go through these transitions. And my job right now, which I think we'll get to, is is pretty practical. And I actually spend most of my waking hours with people who are not college professors. so they're they're always like laughing of like, what happened to you? Cause when I went to grad school.

I did what what all earnest graduate students do, which is you pick the hardest and most like niche topic. You whatever whatever somebody in authority tells you is like the hardest topic you could possibly work on, you jump in and work on that. And like the more esoteric the better, because when you're when you're early on in grad school, your most fundamental drive is for people to think that you're smart.

And like, and that's the currency of grad school is just like raw power. Like you can just do the hardest problems, you know the really difficult texts. And so, and I was like, let's go when I was on my way to grad school. So, like, what's the hardest possible topic? Like the nature of time itself. like that's that's like it doesn't even get too much more difficult than that. and and I actually I one of the things I learned I loved,

Chris McAlilly (11:10.126)
Ha ha.

Eddie Rester (11:15.93)
Okay.

Meghan Sullivan (11:26.846)
as a philosophy student that really convinced me to go to graduate school was that I liked the practical topics, but I also just loved the pure like system building and the, you know, the the really deep historical questions. So I was excited to work on that in grad school. My dissertation had the most like cringe title. It was called The A Theory, a theory.

The the A theory of time, a theory, but I even took out of time just to make it a little bit sillier. But I look back on this and like, my gosh, like nobody in there I don't even know, I'm sure my dissertation advisor totally understood everything that was in that thing. It was like it was it was cringe.

Eddie Rester (12:06.32)
I I I get an email once a quarter with how many people have read my dissertation, how many people have pulled it electronically. I hope you don't get that email. It's it's very depressing.

Meghan Sullivan (12:11.964)
Yeah.

Meghan Sullivan (12:15.808)
I'm gonna go look up your dissertation. I'm gonna go polar right now. What was your title, Eddie?

Eddie Rester (12:20.282)
It was organic models of church renewal or something like that. But yeah, I'm averaging I think one a quarter. Probably you know, my my wife is going to pull it just to keep me happy. So

Meghan Sullivan (12:24.415)
I love it.

Chris McAlilly (12:27.422)
Ha ha.

Meghan Sullivan (12:30.412)
Just going refreshing.

Chris McAlilly (12:31.291)
I I I I have it on good authority that that's not happening. That is it's not your wife.

Eddie Rester (12:34.876)
Right.

Meghan Sullivan (12:35.285)
I'm gonna go get it after this. I'm gonna pull it, put it on my shelf. I had a big go ahead. No, you go ahead.

Eddie Rester (12:38.342)
Yeah. There you go. I we know one of the things that well, go ahead. I'm sorry. I I just gonna I was just gonna say that as you think about your your work and the practicality of it and and accessibility, one of the things that I've listening to your podcast, reading some of your work, you've made these important conversations accessible. And you you you and I think a another professor created a course, God and the good life at Notre Dame.

And it's become the most popular course at Notre Dame. And but but you've s you've worked at in reading the book, The The Good Life Method, at making the exploration really accessible. Why was that important to you? Because you could have just taught philosophy one on one and made people made people regurgitate Socrates for the next 20 years, but you really worked to do something different.

Meghan Sullivan (13:33.194)
Yeah, yeah. You know, I had I had a big turning point in my thinking about what my vocation is. in twenty fourteen. So I was going through the tenure process at Notre Dame, which you folks are listening know for professors, you get like six years and then the university either decides to give you a contract for the rest of your life or you're fired. Like it's up or out in our system.

And so it's a very, it's a crucible moment for somebody who thinks that they want to be a professor. And so I was going through the tenure process and and I'm a I'm a baby. So I decided the year that and it takes a whole year for them to make the decision. So it could it's a long, drawn out process. So I decided the year they were making that decision, I had a I had a leave that was owed to me and I'd gotten a little grant, and I decided to move to Singapore that year.

And so I left South Bend and decided what how far on planet Earth can I get away while this momentous decision is happening behind my back. and and I'll just kind of regroup and think about what I want to do next because no matter what my life is is gonna change next year. And so I was down I spent the year in Singapore. I was for the first time I wasn't teaching. I I loved teaching, but that was my first year off of teaching. my only year not teaching, come to come to come to think of it now.

but I was down in Singapore and I was working on a book about philosophy of time. and was n fretting about my future. And I had this really strong conviction when I was down there. I like, you know, when I go back, I I hope that I'll get to be a partner at Notre Dame, like I'll get to stay and really and I wanna really throw myself into community life when that happens. Like when they when they say that I'm in, I wanna

I want to really like embrace that that that identity. And what do I want to spend all my time on now that I don't have to worry about being fired all the time? And the very strong conviction that I had when I was down there, and I can still remember like sitting, you know, in 90 degree heat at the cafe at the university I was at, thinking, I wanna finish this book, but I really want to build.

Meghan Sullivan (15:55.888)
a different kind of philosophy class. Like I I I want to spend a big part of the next phase of my work with students, which is kind of counterintuitive. Usually you get less teaching and more of other stuff when you get tenure. but I I got back to campus. I did I got tenure. I got back to campus and all of the tenured professors in my department were invited to a meeting with the dean. And I'd never been allowed to talk to the dean before.

so all of the tenured faculty in our philosophy department went to this meeting in the dean's conference room and the dean's like, what should the de what should the philosophy department focus on the next five years? And my colleagues all go around and they're like, hiring a philosopher of science, like hiring a logician. And and I the correct answer, by the way, if is you if you get a meeting with the dean, you're supposed ask for money. Like that's the that's the thing that you're meant to do if you're not a dummy.

Eddie Rester (16:46.345)
Mm.

Meghan Sullivan (16:49.707)
but of course I'd been in Singapore and I'd never been to any meetings before with my colleagues about this. And I was brand new, like the ink was still wet on my contract. And so they comes around to me and I was like, I think we should totally rethink how we teach our intro philosophy class. And I think it should be about the good life. And I think it should be focused on what kinds of exercises can somebody do in 14 weeks to sort of care for their soul the way that all these philosophers from antiquity that we love say you should do in your life.

And my colleagues give me the stink eye of like, what are you what are you thinking? Like who invited her? But afterwards, the the Dean, who was a he's a really, really extraordinary leader. He's now our provost, he's now my boss, in another capacity, he pulled me aside and he said, You know what? Like that's one of the best answers I've heard to this question. And that is really like

Eddie Rester (17:21.043)
You're not getting you're not asking for money for that, yeah.

Meghan Sullivan (17:47.008)
Well, that gets to the heart of what we're all about. He's like, he's like, do it. I'm telling like I can't make you do anything anymore, but I'm telling you, as your kind of more senior colleague, like this is this is worth doing. And so that year, I pulled Paul Blaschka, who wrote the book with me, who was one of my one of the grad students in our department at the time, and another one of our grad students who didn't write the book. His name's Justin. And

I was like, Hey, do you guys want to help me with this little scheme? You know, there's no money, strong possibility of failure. It's gonna take up like heaps of time. and they were all gung-ho about it. And so together we spent about a year developing the concept of God in the good life. And then we launched it in fall twenty sixteen. And I think this caught a lot of people off guard, us included.

There was kind of something in the air that fall. I think there was a lot of unrest and dissatisfaction and a a lot of young people especially were looking for looking to have these conversations. Yeah, it was a a big election year. There was just a lot going on at that point. And so the class took off r it off really fast. and we started getting to I started getting to know college faculty members.

at other schools who had noticed a kind of similar need on their campus, and we we started collaborating a lot more and and the and it just kind of grew to take over, frankly, a big part of my life in a in a wonderful way. sometimes my colleagues will look at me and they'll think like you used to be this big time nerd and now you spend all your time, you know, shouting about Play-Doh to anybody who will listen. But I felt like teaching that class, even even like the third week of school that

that fall twenty sixteen semester, I had this feeling, similar feeling like when I became Catholic, like when I first started going to church of just like, this is home. Like this is this is what you were meant to be doing all along. Whereas I never had that feeling, in graduate school.

Chris McAlilly (19:49.055)
Lo looking at the book, the the Good Life Method, one of the things that I love about it is that it oriented and it and of course, you know, yeah I I mean I see Aristotle in the background of just orienting what it means to be human in light of the end, in light of trajectory, purpose. and then but the other the other pieces that that, you know, I think are picked up later as you're having conversations about information versus

Eddie Rester (19:49.6)
You know what

Chris McAlilly (20:18.548)
wisdom and technology and its role and place are are just these topics of certainly purpose and and the end of the human person, the end of the human life. But then I love probably my favorite is the sense of joining together the circles of your life, the integration or coherence of a life that I think is something that that I see young young people, people in college trying to figure out that piece.

And and that philosophy can be a way of life, not just more information, but it can offer you actually wisdom and formation on on your journey of becoming a person of character, a person that has the kind of virtue that you would need if you're gonna engage the world with wisdom and ultimately that would lead in the direction of your own personal f you know, well being and the flourishing of the community. how did you guys kind of orient the central claims of the class and and the book?

In light of the good life.

Meghan Sullivan (21:19.039)
Yeah, well I'm so glad you picked up on that. The the joining the circles, that's the the stoic philosophers. I think it's Seneca, that that had that beautiful image, but this thought like that's the work of our life is trying for integration, like real like integration, stable integration, rather than thinking like I'm one person when I show up at work and I'm another person when I'm a parent, another person, you know, in the in my moments of rest. But the thinking like, you know, I want to be the same complete flourishing person.

throughout my life. you know, the the big philosophical idea behind the course, which we spend the first week really drilling with students in the and the opening chapters of the book, which the book is meant for everybody, not college students. Like it is everybody wonders about questions. the the big philosophical provocation is

Eddie Rester (22:02.791)
It's great.

Meghan Sullivan (22:10.062)
Aristotle, so Aristotle, you know, if you remember your ancient Greek philosophers, you Socrates, he starts philosophy, he gets killed by the Athenians for being too aggressive. Then his student Plato writes a bunch of texts and books and ideas. And then Plato's student Aristotle is really, you know, the third the third movie's always always the best. I don't think that's true, but the the the the the second sequel is really when philosophy comes into its own as a discipline that's never gonna go away.

Aristotle is kind of the grandfather of how to practice philosophy. And he has this incredible idea in his the way he opens his class about the good life. He tells we have all of his lecture notes. It's his most famous book. It's called The Ethics. And his second lecture, he tells his students we conduct this examination not so that we can know what virtue is, but so that we might benefit from it. And this it sounds like a simple idea.

Eddie Rester (23:03.338)
Mm.

Meghan Sullivan (23:06.238)
But it's actually pretty radical. He says that there's a immense difference between knowing facts about ethics and having opinions about ethical questions and just like the theoretical knowledge you have about what's good and bad. Like we're pretty good at that. Every time you read an op ed in the newspaper, you get a little bit more information on that. There's a world of difference between that, knowing how to define what virtue is, and being a good person.

Like becoming a what Aristotle thinks is like a flourishing, happy person. The second thing, that's our life's work. Like that, that's where the focus should be. And he says, if your philosophy class is not helping you with the second thing, you know, ditch it. Like who then who honestly cares? Which is for his teacher Plato, that would have been fighting words.

Like that would that's a very, very radical claim. But it's one that I think I've been deeply moved by. And so in the we start off the class, we say, Here's a weird promise we're making to you. we think in 14 weeks you can make a little bit of progress toward human flourishing. A little bit. And I know, you know, you gotta you gotta be willing to participate. Same way, like my personal trainer says, if you go with the plan.

You'll be able to do a pull-up in three months. But if you don't do the exercises, you're in big trouble. Aristotle you Aristotle says it, we say to the students, no guarantees, but we're gonna point you a direction that we want we're our our biggest goal for you is at the end of this, you to feel like you are one step closer to being like an integrated, flourishing person. And we're not making we're not making this up. We're not

Like, you know, my my students are all looking for good life advice and they watch a bunch of YouTube videos and they listen to podcasts and they they buy supplements off the internet. Everybody's hungry for this kind of advice. But we're not making this up. This is this is the old stuff. Like this is stuff that's really been tried and tested over thousands of years that we are gonna introduce you to. And if you go with it, you might, along with like thousands of years of your fellow humans, find you really like it.

Meghan Sullivan (25:16.904)
And so the structure of the class is each week we take on a different set of prescriptions and questions about the good life, and we move from the we we do with the top ten most important questions, in my humble opinion. And we start with the easiest of the ten and we end with the hardest. The easiest one, which my colleagues also just roll their eyes about, is political disagreement. So, like, how do you navigate the fact that you think some things are true?

And other smart people think that they're false and you've got to figure out how to live with them. That to to some people at universities right now, that is the most difficult question any of us could face. We actually put that as it makes the top 10, but it's numbered 10. And it's a great opportunity to read these Greek philosophers who had all kinds of political problems, even worse than the ones that we currently have. And then we build our way up. We talk, we talk about politics, we talk about money in the good life, we do what are you morally responsible for and what is not your fault.

We talk about work and how do you discover your life's work, love, and in particular, what responsibility do you have for cultivating and maintaining loving relationships? We talk about whether God exists and it makes sense to practice any religion. We talk about faith and not just religious faith, but all of the leaps of faith that you're asked to take, where you just honestly don't know what to do, but you've got to have this virtue of faith. Then we get to the really hard ones. What

Parts of your life don't require you to do anything, but just require you to become a certain kind of person. That's a very abstract idea, but one that's very, very important to the history of philosophy. And then how do you deal with the fact that everyone that you love is going to suffer and die? Like no matter how no matter how good you are, no matter how important your work is, or how much money you have.

Or how much you care for the poor or how loving you are, all of your efforts at the end of the day are gonna be ultimately answered in suffering. And then finally, you know, you get, if you're lucky, a hundred years on this earth, which in the grand scheme of things is nothing. You know, it's a it's a flap of a butterfly's wings. And nobody will remember that you existed, and you know, your projects in the you know, to quote the author from Ecclesiastes.

Meghan Sullivan (27:36.756)
They're all dust at the end. They're getting dust. So why bother? Like what's your answer to this question of why you're even bothering? and that's and then we send them home for summer vacation. And that's and that's that's and that's philosophy.

Eddie Rester (27:37.771)
It's all dust.

Eddie Rester (27:49.387)
Back to mom and dad. Yeah.

Eddie Rester (27:57.355)
Yeah. Go ahead.

Chris McAlilly (27:57.622)
Well, I think these the college students that I come across are are hungry and eager to have these kind of conversations and when you put them in a room and say, What are your questions? they circle around versions of the questions that you're asking. The thing that I think is distinctive is taking them out of the world of the algorithm and the feed and the content that they may be immediately chew you know, chewing on or grappling with that

has been created within the last f 50 years or the last five years or the last five minutes and pushing them back to the oldest ways of having these conversations. And it seems like the the the shift, the way that I've been trying to kind of think about the role of institutions, whether they be educational, religious, the church or whatever, is just the shift from thinking that what we're doing is giving people information to

trying to help cultivate communities of wisdom that that are old and multi-generational and multi-century, I guess. And it seems like what's fascinating to me is that there's this pivot point from just teaching this one class over and over to the classroom, you know, to these students in the classroom. It fits into this moment within Notre Dame's strategic vision where ethics kind of rises up.

To one of the strategic initiatives that you you're just kind of well situated to be a part of that conversation, it seems to me. I wonder if you could talk about that journey from the one classroom and the one class into this strategic initiative that that Notre Dame has made a a central focus of the last several years in how to offer ethical wisdom within important conversations that we're we're struggling with globally.

Meghan Sullivan (29:50.57)
Yeah, it's so funny, you know. I've been in the news a lot, like much more this summer than any other point in my life. And it's all for AI all for various like AI meetings and convenings that I'm involved in. And man, if you had told me even three years ago, like you'll you you're gonna get covered in the New York Times. I'll be like, cool. And then you'd be like, for AI and I'm like, What? I would have been very surprised.

Chris McAlilly (30:13.323)
Ha ha ha ha.

Meghan Sullivan (30:18.291)
But it does, I think, make a certain amount of sense. You know, one of the thought experiments I give my students on the ver very first day of class, we've been I've been doing this for like five, six years now, is imagine that Sam Altman announces this new product that you can download on your phone called the Guru app. And the deal with this AI is that it has it already has all your data. Sorry, it just took, it knows everything, every kind of freely available piece of information about your behavior and every person that's like you.

And all all their medical data and their financial data, just it it it knows everything. It's omniscient about your data. And you can talk to this AI and it will answer all of your questions about the good life. So you can ask it, hey, you know, guru app, should I should I become a vegan? And it'll do it'll say, like, yeah, for somebody like you that lives in the United States of America and has this income and this health profile, you should no longer eat meat.

Or should I stay Catholic or should I become Methodist? It'll say, like, yeah, given all of your beliefs and given like the evidence in favor of Methodism, you need to convert. so I'd say, like, what if you had an app like this? Like, would you start using it? Would you turn over your deliberations about the good life to this AI? And most of my students are like, no. And I'm like, okay, but why? Like what is what's what's missing besides accurate yeah the quote unquote accuracy of this?

And most of them, not all of them, but most of them come to this realization, there's a certain, there's certain aspects of life that I want to do myself or with humans that I love. And there and that like the good life is a matter of doing those activities, like doing those things, those human things are the actually what I've been wanting all along.

And if I start giving more and more of that away for free to companies or for small subscriptions, what left is there for me to hope for? And one, as we launched this ethics initiative, we talked to like this, we we launched Notre Dame decided a couple of years ago we really want to level up in the role that we play in ho in translating Christian ideas about ethics to the broader culture and

Meghan Sullivan (32:35.745)
one of the ideas we heard loud and clear from lots of our students and parents and faculty members and friends, football fans, is that there's a lot of nervousness about how fast artificial intelligence is changing our lives and institutions. And this amount of really rapid disruption raises really profound questions about what a good life is.

And what the common good consists in when you have a power that no human being has ever had access to in the course of human history. And the world doesn't expect the Catholic Church to know that much about how to like build AI. Like, I don't know, good luck. We have, I don't think we have any computer chips at all, any GPUs. But the world does expect Christian the Christian church, and the Catholic world and the Methodist world to have.

Chris McAlilly (33:08.077)
Mm.

Meghan Sullivan (33:32.227)
A really well thought out theory about what in a human life must be protected and defended, and what we can move roll with the changes on. Because we've we have rolled with a lot of changes over 2,000 years. and so that that call, that that way of framing the questions with AI said, all right, well, I have a lot of experience, you know, helping convene conversations on that, and I'm very, very passionate.

about helping people think about those questions. And then we realized, you know, the past year, I feel like we've really, we've really hit this moment where folks are waking up thinking, this is it's not just that AI's in the news constantly. It's like in my life constantly. My job has changed. My kids' school is unrecognizable to me.

I now use it, you know, on my phone all the time. Or I'm trying really hard not to start an account, but I don't know how much longer I can resist. And it felt like the urgency for the for faith communities to speed up their conversations in the last year has just been acute. And I am honestly really glad I've been able to have some of the philosophical training over the last 20 years that I've

I've experienced because I think that that's prepared me to decide, okay, well this is a this is kind of a moment where these ideas are gonna be practically really tested and and I I I care about how we come out the other side of it.

Eddie Rester (35:11.104)
I was I was thinking this morning as another article popped up on my feed about AI and somebody who had left a company and they replaced them with an AI something. They've re renamed the position AI something because they felt like they had to do this and but also articles this morning about local I'm in Dallas, Texas, and local communities fighting about AI centers going into their communities. And so it it touches on so many pieces.

Meghan Sullivan (35:36.872)
Mm-hmm.

Eddie Rester (35:41.238)
of life. And I I th I think for me that's what was unexpected. Sure, it's a tool on the computer. how do we use it? How do we not use it? But but it it's become much more about work and life and how our students learn. David Brooks wrote a great article in The Atlantic that Chris sent me, I think, last week. Yeah, great article. Apple computers talking about, well maybe we'll wall off AI behind a paywall, our version of AI for Apple, so that you had to pay to get to AI. So

Meghan Sullivan (35:45.234)
Mm-hmm.

Meghan Sullivan (35:57.767)
Love that art. I

Eddie Rester (36:10.933)
Now there are digital divides that could erupt over AI. So it it there's so many topics. How how do you begin to frame up the conversation? What what what's important for us as Christians to begin thinking about or talking about in this conversation?

Meghan Sullivan (36:32.22)
First, my you know, the to trying to frame this conversation and trying to stay focused. I always describe this to my colleagues a lot, 'cause we now I where I get to work with a bunch of folks at Notre Dame on these AI and the good life projects. sometimes it's like you stuck a marshmallow in the microwave and like every five seconds you look and it's bigger and a different part of it's on fire and you're just trying to like get it back in in control, but it's not possible 'cause it's moving so fast and it's so hot l literally.

I think the way I talk with my folks at the institute about this is our most important goal as a as a university and as a research institute that's connected very closely with the Christian faith is to try to help translate the like ride or die message about human dignity to to audiences that are like aware that the

World of Faith has something important to say about this, but but do not have the attention span to really like to they're not gonna do a master's degree in theology. they probably took no humanities courses in college. And so how do you get this message that feels really vital to be accessible and legible to folks who work in technology or or who are having to make really d challenging decisions around this technology and they don't have a ton of time.

But they really want to tap into this insight. And so for us, our project is called Delta. We call ourselves the Delta Force sometimes when we're feeling very proud. even though if you look at a if you watch the video of this podcast, you'd be like, my gosh, the army would be the army's gonna sue us. we're a bunch of nerds. But Delta, Delta is an acronym that's meant to to kind of concisely capture

Eddie Rester (38:10.541)
Very bold.

Meghan Sullivan (38:28.528)
The key point of view from the faith community about what has to be preserved and what should be the center of our focus as we do this AI transition. So, Delta D, human dignity is the center of our vision of ethics. Every single human life has infinite worth, and your value and the meaning and value of your life.

Has never for a minute depended on your ability to solve math problems quickly, your ability to like write essays efficiently, or write computer code, or even frankly, how economically productive you are, all of the things that AI is astonishingly good at and just getting better. Thank God, your value and the centrality of you to ethical life has never depended on any of those things.

So then the question comes up, because some people don't believe that. Some of our colleagues, and especially the folks that frankly that we talked to in Silicon Valley, I could tell folks that just genuinely do not believe that that's true. Like they can't wrap their heads around somebody's life being valuable if it's not valuable because of the impact that they are having with their life on Exactly. But we say first message, which is a very strange message, but a core message to Christianity and Judaism before that.

Eddie Rester (39:46.007)
What they produce. Yeah.

Meghan Sullivan (39:55.693)
Is that is not where value comes from. So where does your value come from? You know, in the Christian tradition, it's the fact that you were made in the image and likeness of God. But for folks who are not religious, then they're immediately like, I don't understand what you're talking about. Or like, you know, what isn't God productive? Can't God do math? like actually what what's most important about how you were made and the parts of your identity that that we now have to hold on to with both hands is the LTA.

You are embodied. And your body, your embodiment is not an accident. It's not a defect, but it's actually one of the things that one of the key things that makes your life extremely meaningful and that AI will never have. You are born vulnerable. People have different bodies. People we we exit this life quickly and in a vulnerable state. And these kinds of vulnerabilities and dependencies are actually not a problem that has to be fixed.

But something that that in our faith is actually a very beautiful part of human life and something that we would never aspire to get out of this life. L is love. You know, many most college c most college classes on technology right now present to students this vision that the most important ethical questions we face with technology are all about optimization. Just how do you get the best possible outcomes from from a decision involving technology?

And one of the radical ideas about the faith community is this isn't about just constant optimization, but optimization to what end? We want to live in a society where people are loved and are capable of loving each other. And technology oftentimes hurts our capacity to love and care for each other. And that's like the rock bottom of ethics in the Christian tradition is relational. Like, how are you caring for your fellow human being?

Eddie Rester (41:52.057)
Last last week I had a conversation with somebody who works at a big Fortune one hundred company in the IT department, and they're having this real hard AI push right now. And he's like, What was the conversation need to be? I'm like, AI's not relational. Two humans can do things and have conversations that AI can't. Anyway, it's it w he he came in struggling and it it's about this thing that yeah. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I I think that that's

Where somewhere the rubber really does meet the road for us.

Meghan Sullivan (42:25.705)
for sure. And that and this is very different from this constantly optimized logic that's kind of the frankly the default logic of the United States of America. the T and the A really quick if you're just trying, if you're filling out your Enneagram at home. T is transcendence. AI is awesome. I use I use AI every day. I used Claude for three tasks just this morning. AI is extremely good at finding the maximally relevant

Piece of text for a question that you put in as a prompt. It's like a relevant super engine. But one of the things that we know in our faith tradition is that our minds were not just built to try to find relevant bits of data, but they were meant to know what's ultimately true and good and beautiful. They're meant to know and comprehend things that we might not even have data about yet. they're meant to know things that are independent of our minds and human creation.

That we're just built to contemplate. And there are certain kinds of cognitive and intellectual activities that our embodied minds can do, loving minds can do, that this thing will never be able to do. And a generation of young people who grow up with AI all over their freaking educations and childhoods are frankly gonna be needed to be reminded that there are other things they could use their wet brain for than just looking up data on a on a piece of software.

And then finally, a agency, and this gets kind of big to our conversation about God in the good life. You have a free will. You have choices and a conscience, and you're responsible for how you use that. And that's a good thing. Like you don't want to give all of your responsibility over to a piece of technology that promises for like a low, low $20 a month subscription fee, it'll do all it'll do everything for you. And

Realizing where your responsibility to other humans begins and ends and what kinds of decisions not only need humans in the loop, but a machine could should never propose to make. Those are some of the really challenging ethical questions we're now facing that we don't know what to do. Humans have never had this kind of freedom to give up their agency as they do now.

Chris McAlilly (44:42.375)
Mm-hmm. I think the thing the thing that I hear you saying is that AI so in light of the this trajectory from thinking about the metaphysics of time to thinking about how humans act in time, you know, leading back to some of the the most ancient ways of framing that conversation in terms of the beginnings of a conversation about a way of living that philosophy kind of gives you access to. Seems like AI just

One of the things it it has done for you vocationally is been a catalyst for kind of you know, asking these older questions again in a new pitch, not just within a classroom, but trying to offer I I think the the word you use was translating Christian ideas and for the public, for the public good. The thing that I'm interested in the way that you and your colleagues are approaching the problem.

Some people would approach it by writing a monograph. the thing that I find fascinating about about you is that you're approaching it as a intellectually serious problem, but at the intersection of institutions and networks. and one of the one of the frameworks that or I guess one of the analogies that I found fascinating in in terms of the way that you're kind of conceptualizing the problem is that

and talking about the origin story of the Delta network and kind of that framework. So that the United States in nineteen forty five made a two billion dollar scientific gamble and that led to the atomic bomb. Right now we're making a one trillion dollar gamble on AI. so there's just no way we're gonna avoid this technology. All we can do is speed up and deepen the conversations. I guess would you you know why why is it that you're

approach to I guess solving the problem or not solving the problem but addressing or engaging the problem is is through networks and institutions kind of kind of large scale.

Meghan Sullivan (46:46.095)
Yeah, I and I'm still feeling this out. Well first thing I should say is if if history is any guide, you normally don't want philosophers advising the government because there's a whole lot of bad examples of this. like, you know, from Nostradamus to to to to Pl Plato got himself into a whole lot of trouble with the Athenians or sometimes philosophers are just so out of touch and idealistic that they actually or extreme that they give advice,

that for ordinary people is not good for their way of life. so I one, I don't think I think this is a conversation we should all be having together. And I also think it'd be a huge mistake for anyone to listen to like the theorists when when their advice is not matching the lived reality, especially when you got a big revolution happening like the one that we're in the middle of right now at this technology. one of the

Eddie Rester (47:17.623)
That's good.

Meghan Sullivan (47:43.895)
areas where I just love my job right now and feel so intellectually challenged but also inspired is the the technology and the way the the problems that it's posing, the concrete problems, are such an occasion to like rethink Phil how how we how our philosophy works and our are our grounding to

My work in a way that like just reading books by dead guys never was. So, you know, real life example. I had the chance to visit with Anthropics engineering team in March. and they like like some other tech companies have been actually doing a lot of consultations with faith communities now that they realize we're we're we're in this. And and if I walked into that meeting thinking.

You know what? I just wish all these AI companies would stop giving their products personalities. That would just solve a lot of problems. Just hit delete on the personality aspect of their products and make them more like library card catalogs. And then a lot of these social issues that we're worried about would probably start to go away. And you go and you sit with the engineers and they're like, actually, it's kind of complicated. So let us and and they're they're they're so intellectually humble. Like they they'll sit down and explain it you. They're like,

Eddie Rester (48:49.968)
Mm-hmm.

Meghan Sullivan (49:10.852)
Look, these AIs, they're built on human language. can we get emotion and personality out of the stuff of human language? Like could we redu could we get it out of like the basic building blocks of this? And you're like, that's a that's a pretty fascinating philosophical question. I haven't thought about it in a while. I guess I guess probably not. I think I don't know if you can get emotion and passion and personality out of our language. And they're like, and here's a you know, we want people to use this product safely.

Are people, are human users and human characters more likely to use or or misuse a product that's encouraging them towards certain personality traits or a product that feels really cold and clinical? And how is this going to shape users that use this AI all the time? And what's the best way to develop the character of the AI and consultation with human character? And you're sitting in these meetings, and these are engineers who are just like, you tell you tell me how to train the model and I'll give it a shot. And I'm like

man, I don't know anymore what I'm telling you. This is super hard. I I went back, I wrote a substack post. We got a s I got a substack called the Human Delta and wrote a post being like, you know, went to anthropic and my mind was blown and now I realize, my gosh, my my my like naive Monday morning quarterbacking answers to how we're gonna build this thing are way too simplistic and I gotta really pay attention to what it is.

Chris McAlilly (50:09.61)
Ha ha ha.

Eddie Rester (50:09.712)
Ha ha ha.

Eddie Rester (50:36.976)
So so the government doesn't end up taking you out like it, you know, previous philosophers. So yeah. I like we don't want that no we have a problem

Chris McAlilly (50:39.306)
We We definitely we definitely don't want we don't want the no but

Meghan Sullivan (50:40.47)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. It'd be good for book sales. That's what Plato that's Plato would tell ya.

Eddie Rester (50:50.862)
we've we've kept you long and I could s we could that that personality question, I could spend three hours talking with you about that, I think, because I heard you talk about that on another podcast and I started thinking, but because there was that preacher that let AI coach him through an ill anyway, a whole different thing. So I I one one more final question for you, and and this is kind of maybe post those questions. What what's what's your hope? I mean

Chris McAlilly (50:51.08)
I do go for it.

Eddie Rester (51:19.93)
We're people people of faith. Hope is our hope's our currency. And so as you think about this conversation with about AI and with AI, w where's where's the hope that you see or what's the hope that you would tell us about?

Meghan Sullivan (51:24.656)
Yeah.

Meghan Sullivan (51:37.136)
You know, I I'll hear from folks from time to time that think, you know, they're real doomers about artificial intelligence and they think, My gosh, this technology is also just gonna further demonstrate the complete irrelevance of Christianity and these old ways of thinking and and they kind of despair of all of that. and I wake up every morning and think Christianity is like

Built for this moment. Like this is this is our time to shine. We got a technology that's provoking a whole lot of folks to ask these really existential questions of what am I? Like what is the value and meaning and destiny of my life? And what am I not? And they've got a lot of

Lousy options on YouTube. I I watch a ton of YouTube, so that's why I feel like an expert on YouTube. There's so many like cranks that are happy to pontificate about this technology and try to answer that question for you. And almost everybody I know, Christian or not, thinks like, I don't know. What Peter Thiel's saying about this is just not really squaring not not satisfying to me. And I think, well, Pope Leo wrote this awesome.

encyclical about artificial intelligence this summer, and like a whole lot of people that don't read encyclicals read that. Took it to the beach and started getting in fights with their kids about it. And I think there's plenty of more of that to come because we have just this incredible tradition that has a whole lot to say about this particular question. And you don't have to stretch to make it relevant. Like the the the the dignity, embodiment, love.

Eddie Rester (53:07.003)
Mm-hmm.

Meghan Sullivan (53:27.514)
These kinds of ideas are just so relevant to the predicament that many people find themselves in. I have hope of just thinking like we're built for this. Like, you know, this is we're we this is a chance we're really gonna show you how beautiful and cool this this approach to life is, and that maybe that's gonna inspire you to let it shift more than just

your approach to AI, but like how you know, many other aspects of how you're you're bringing your life into into coherence. So anyways, I'm pretty I I'm generally a glass half full kind of person anyway. But I feel like this is just it's gonna be a very exciting moment because things that we ideas that we care about and we've devoted our lives to now feel like they're they're they're really inspiring and relevant to questions a lot of other people are dealing with.

Chris McAlilly (54:18.332)
Megan, thanks for being with us today and thank you for this conversation. I am curious if you would maybe point someone who wants to explore your work or the work of the institute. where would you point them to go next?

Meghan Sullivan (54:33.382)
Sure. So ethics.edu. You can find a whole lot about our institute. And then I got a substack called The Human Delta, where you get my occasional musings and rants about artificial intelligence and Christianity and human dignity. which is so definitely what what what did the what do the kids say? Smash that subscribe button. After you subscribe to the Wait, you should subscribe to the Human Delta. And of course check out the good life method. I've got

Eddie Rester (54:54.169)
All right.

Chris McAlilly (54:54.666)
Ha ha.

Meghan Sullivan (55:01.988)
I've got a new book I'm finishing up on, on the parable of the Good Samaritan and our capacity to love strangers. This has been one of my big passion projects of the last few years. So maybe I can come talk to you guys again too in like a year and we can talk about why why we all hate each other. And why and what we can what we could possibly do to fix that, which is my besides AI is my other b passion project as a philosopher right now.

Eddie Rester (55:12.945)
Please.

Eddie Rester (55:18.993)
What's what

Eddie Rester (55:27.491)
I would I would love to have that conversation. Thank you for taking time to be with us. And I'm so glad, so glad you're in the conversation right now. So thank you for that.

Meghan Sullivan (55:37.27)
thank you guys.