For 75 years, humans have adapted to computers. With AI, computers finally adapt to humans, and Pat Gelsinger believes the church must show up this time to shape that technology as a force for good.
Pat is the retired CEO of Intel, chairman of the board at Gloo, where he also leads on technology, and a general partner at the venture capital firm Playground Global. He has spent decades at the forefront of technology, and his entire adult life as what he calls a workplace minister, bringing his faith explicitly into the tech world.
We sat down with Pat at Missional AI 2025 in Dallas, just after his fireside chat on the main stage with Gloo's Steele Billings. We talked about why AI is the biggest technology wave yet, what the church learned from social media, and his challenge to faith-driven developers.
Pat joined Gloo to bring together the two pillars of his life and give the faith community technology that matches its mission.
Pat came to Christ at 18 and has lived as a full-time minister in the workplace ever since, while helping build some of the most important technologies of recent decades. At Gloo, he can bring faith and tech together explicitly.
His diagnosis is blunt: the faith ecosystem has had "lousy tech" for decades. The question now is whether it can embrace this era of internet, mobile, cloud and AI, "the big daddy of them all," and bring technology to the faith community at scale, with more efficiency and global reach.
AI will be woven into everything, and because computers will now adapt to people, Pat sees a Gutenberg moment for reaching every person on earth.
Pat remembers his first time on the internet, running early file transfers with UC San Diego. It felt like entering the holy of holies, and he couldn't wait to get back to the lab. Today, keep a teenager offline for ten seconds and you've ruined their existence. AI, he says, will be bigger still, infused into everything and built on the shoulders of PCs, mobile, the internet and wireless.
What makes it different is that, after 75 years of humans adapting to computers, computers will adapt to humans. That opens up ways of integrating technology into human life that were never possible before.
For the church, that means a powerful new way to fulfill the Great Commission to go into all the world, a call that has long driven Bible translation. Pat compares it to the moment of Martin Luther and the Gutenberg Bible: a chance to reach every person on the planet, educate every child living in poverty and solve diseases once thought intractable, all in the name of Christ.
The faith community didn't help shape social media, and Pat says we can't make that mistake with AI, a technology with values at its core.
Technology is fundamentally neutral, Pat says. The same printing press can produce a Bible or pornography. So the question is how to shape AI as a force for good, so that when someone asks a chatbot "Should I divorce my spouse?" or "What do I do when I'm bullied at school?", or about vocation, wellness and health, the answers reflect the values we hold.
The church, he says, didn't show up for social networks, and most studies now suggest they're roughly 50/50, good or bad, for humanity. If a drug had those odds, it would never pass the FDA; we'd send it back to fix the chemistry. Yet we use social media every day.
AI matters far more, because it carries knowledge and, at its heart, values. That's why Pat points to the Harvard and Baylor research on human flourishing, which Gloo is helping turn into benchmarks and standards. We need to embed flourishing into the core of the models, he says, so AI is truly a force for good.
Good values aren't enough; faith-driven builders must make best-in-class products, and use them to accelerate the mission.
Pat's first piece of advice is simple: do some cool stuff. Great tech with poor values, or great values with mediocre tech, which wins? The great product wins. So faith-driven developers must build excellent products, and Gloo's job, he says, is to give them the best foundation to do it.
Excellence is a matter of faith, too. Pat points to Colossians 3:23, "work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men." Being better than other faith products while trailing far behind Google isn't good enough. "We need to be best in class."
He also urges builders to aim high. Bible translation that once took decades might take weeks. But why stop there? Can we solve translation for medicine, psychology, coaching and every kind of human interaction? Build great products that are broadly useful, and we'll better fulfill the Great Commission and the Great Commandment along the way.
Pat's only regret is that he isn't 30 years younger and just starting out, because there are decades of incredible work ahead. Echoing Intel co-founder Robert Noyce, he leaves developers with a charge: "Go off and do something wonderful."
Pat appeared twice on the main stage at Missional AI 2025. Both sessions are in the Missional AI Video Library under Dallas 2025 Keynotes:
Listen to the full episode with Pat Gelsinger on the Missional AI Podcast, and subscribe so you don't miss future conversations.
The Missional AI 2026 Global Summit is coming to San Jose, California, April 7–9, 2026, right at the epicenter of AI. We expect around 1,000 leaders from industry and the faith sector. Sign up at missional.ai to be notified when registration opens.
This episode was made possible in partnership with Gloo, the technology platform connecting the faith ecosystem.