Every technology carries assumptions about the people who will use it: what they want, what they need, and what makes a life go well. As AI reshapes how we learn, work, and relate to one another, those assumptions are becoming consequential design choices. Trained in philosophy and law, and drawing on his work in AI, venture building, and the Leonum Institute, Taylor Black will explore what the Catholic intellectual tradition can contribute to the questions facing Silicon Valley and how its account of human dignity, freedom, and the common good can inspire technologies and institutions worth building.

Taylor Black is Director of AI & Venture Ecosystems within the Strategic Programs and Communities team at Microsoft’s Office of the CTO and the founding director of the Leonum Institute for AI and Emerging Technologies at The Catholic University of America. At Leonum, he brings together research, formation, and venture building in service of human dignity and the common good. His experience spans startup creation, investing, and teaching entrepreneurship at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. Trained in philosophy and law, he explores how our understanding of the human person should shape the technologies and institutions we build. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Anne, and their three children.

Russ Altman is a long-time Catholic Community at Stanford member and a Kenneth Fong Professor of Bioengineering, Genetics, Medicine & Biomedical Data, a Science Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, and Professor, by courtesy, of Computer Science.