Matthew Harvey Sanders, CEO of Longbeard, participated in a conversation on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, focused on the intersection of faith and artificial intelligence. The conversation also featured Fr. Michael Baggot, who is currently a Visiting Scholar of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America, and was hosted by Ana Catarina de Alencar, Resident Philosopher at The AI Collective.

Throughout the course of the conversation, Sanders articulates the primary goals of Longbeard, explaining that Longbeard not only seeks to build and scale Catholic AI but also digitize and therefore increase access to the Church’s teachings. He describes the company’s main goal in AI development as increased fidelity to Church teachings.

He points to Ephrem, the world’s first Catholic language model, while addressing the question of how to achieve alignment given the current limitations of the state-of-the-art technology. In response, Sanders speaks directly to the solution set that Magisterium AI, a compound AI system, currently employs to ensure maximal alignment to the Catholic worldview.

Beyond those topics, Fr. Baggot and Sanders engage in a thoughtful conversation driven by viewer questions that touches on the following topics.

• AI companionship
• safety
• transhumanism
• the impact of AI on the human person
• the application of Catholic social teaching on AI development
• the technical and theological challenges of building a Catholic language model
• the story of the development of Magisterium AI
• the practical impacts of Catholic AI on theological development and catechesis
• the “golden path” that Catholic AI afford
• developing a shared understanding of human flourishing