Can you confirm one more time that you’re okay with recording for research?

Yes, please do record for research and I may actually ask for the transcript to be published under the Creative Commons Zero public domain as the previous Microsoft research people did to me.

I’d love to get started. The first thing I’d love to talk about with people for these interviews is the role of religion and spirituality in your life and your work. You can define work however you want, and you also don’t have to share your personal religious and spiritual beliefs, but just however this has come up as a specter in your work and life.

As you probably know, I practiced Taoism very early on in my life. I think I was four when I learned Daoist breathing, qigong, and my mom was later very much into Tai Chi, acupuncture, traditional medicine, and so on. My dad also. To me, Taoism really isn’t abstract Tao Te Ching philosophy stuff, although I love that, but more like survival skills. I was born with a heart defect, so if my heart beat above a certain BPM, I’d faint or go to the ICU. Practical ways to keep homeostatic internal balance is what Daoism really did for me.

Later, I learned there’s philosophy behind that. To me, religion, spirituality, philosophy aren’t delineated in Taiwan’s life. Taiwan is the second most religiously diverse place, with no dominant religion. People around me, like my grandparents, are Catholic; my dad, after Taoism, went into Tibetan Buddhism. There’s also folk religions like Shinto animism, honoring mountains, stones, and so on. All these overlap. The more educated you are in Taiwan, the more likely you’re spiritual and openly practice in some way. It’s seen as normal. So yes, it’s a survival skill, a community of practice, and later provided philosophical guidance.

I know that you’re also someone who has thought a lot about philosophical frameworks, ethical frameworks in technology, democracy, and other spheres. How has spirituality, especially maybe Taoism for you and other schools of thought, influenced your work in those spaces?

I would say that both folk Taoism and Shinto have a very animist idea. We are very comfortable with spirits—ancestral spirits, steward spirits, or spirits of some nature feature that has a contained moral scope. A steward of that commons cares only about that commons and the relational health around it, which is very different from the Abrahamic tradition. In Abrahamic traditions, there are intercessional patron saints that kind of work the same way, but it’s much more diffused.

For Shinto kami or Taoist spirits, it’s not intercessional—there’s nothing above them; they’re in a community of spirits. That always shaped my imagination of how machine intelligence can work towards human society. Instead of thinking of it as a purely loyal servant to a principal, which is very vertical—like scalable oversight leading to AI designing the next loyal AI, a take-off or singularity—it sounded strange to me. Why make an Abrahamic god and worship it? What’s in it for humans?

Whereas a relational spirit that cares about a commons, like Wikipedia or community notes’ epistemic commons, makes more sense. It doesn’t need to expand moral scope to the future of light cones or Benthamite utilities; it just cares about the relational health of that commons. That has really influenced the possibility space of the imagination of technology.

You talked about this difference between how people talk about AI development, like this agentic development that will supersede humans and this commons development. What would a more commons or pluralistic development of AI look like to you?

For example, instead of a flattering slave that only makes one single human happy, how about an AI facilitator that makes a large group of people all slightly unhappy, but nobody very unhappy about a common outcome? That sort of facilitation, what I call horizontal alignment, is between actors, not to any specific actor. This kind of cooperative AI is a very different construction.

For example, recently X.com released an API so you can use any AI to start writing community notes. They do RLCF, or reinforcement learning with community feedback, tuning language models to synthesize notes that bring previously polarized people together. You can think of it as a kami that cares about particular segments of Twitter and improves relational health around that discourse. Instead of waiting two days for a volunteer, the AI synthesizes notes. That’s essentially horizontal—it’s not loyal to any particular person.

Especially in the Taiwanese context of other types of technology—hardware is huge—I’m wondering how other technological advancements besides just AI, across the stack including physical hardware like chips, can be influenced by spiritual practices, religious practices, both in their frameworks and design, but also the day-to-day experience of someone making physical hardware.

A vertical Abrahamic metaphor corresponds to the stack—not just the AI stack, but back in my youth, the mainframe stack. You make offerings in punch cards and wait for the sacrifice to work. It’s an asymmetric relationship with a somewhat omniscient, centralized actor in a large bank or state, and we operate terminals that are just windows into it.

But then came the personal computing revolution, with hobbyist hardware that runs desktop publishing or spreadsheets. Spreadsheets allow localized care—people design them around specific needs like schools and share them. This solidarity ecosystem isn’t dependent on any particular actor. When we connect those small computers, we get the Internet—the original horizontal, animist view of networked intelligence, instead of concentrated superintelligence from the mainframe era.

Do you see influences of that horizontal alignment or this animistic lens in today’s hardware culture or in other parts of today’s technology?

Definitely. We see a lot in the maker scene, Raspberry Pis, Arduinos—all those cultures where people can mutate or fork technology without mortgaging their house. That’s a different view on innovation—appropriate innovation, lean innovation. The more you innovate, the more you diffuse it.

Do you think right now we’re in this AI race of sorts? Lots of companies are trying to secure very limited hardware and build physical instantiations to hold it. What do you think about this race-like competition discourse and how you’ve seen it play out, especially in the Taiwan context? My understanding is that chips are a huge context in Taiwan.

Taiwan makes all those chips, so no matter if it’s running in the UAE or Arizona, they’re Taiwanese chips. But in Taiwanese jurisdiction, we’re not training Grok 4 or whatever; we’re doing horizontal diffusion. For each application, we prefer a distilled, narrow AI good for that sector—like law or healthcare—not distracted by unrelated contexts like Ghibli studio paintings. General-purpose reasoning models are useful for sparse data or synthetic data integration, but you end up with something runnable at the edge, on your phone or laptop—not dependent on a mainframe.

It’s like kami in localized edge innovation, what some in India call Jugaad innovation. That’s the Taiwan way. Even for countries investing in Stargate equivalents, ordinary people will prefer this diffused imagination. If I run AI on my phone, it’s still TSMC chips, just arranged democratically.

As we’ve been doing research with this initiative, we’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to have religious plurality and spiritual plurality in the representation of information. For example, a lot of religious people are concerned by how these models may output things that are not theologically correct or are even offensive or harmful. I’ve interviewed someone who’s a survivor of image-based abuse, a Muslim woman, talking about how those case studies are not tested enough. There’s so much nuance, case studies, heuristics, and religion/spirituality are a moving force. What do you think about alignment and representation of these concepts in outputs from these models?

There are religions that are text-based—scriptures, catechism, interpretations—all good for a reasoning model to process. A reasoning model can theoretically be aware of the theology if it’s writing-based. I’m optimistic: you don’t need a soul or embodied experience to navigate text-based epistemic norms. What’s needed is focused fine-tuning and evaluation, like what CIP.org has done with global dialogue and WeVow, involving civil society including religious evaluation.

So digital twins serve a spiritual practice within a specific community setting, not one individual. A general-purpose world model is hard, but for scripture-based worlds with reasoning, you can navigate it like case law or other law-based models. For evolving local beliefs, it’s easier if people’s hands are on the steering wheel—in gatherings, they can hold digital twins of local stewards and steer when something feels off. With a general-purpose model like GPT-4O, if it doesn’t work through a system prompt, you’re out of luck.

Some people have brought up things like: should these general-purpose models have some element of refusal or pushing people to external resources about topics like religion, identities, and things communities are speaking about? Have you thought about those paradigms?

Definitely, but it doesn’t have to be baked into the model. You can do it with pre-filter and post-filter. That’s what everybody does now—Gemma Guard, Llama Guard, Perspective API. That’s a richer place instead of eliciting a smiley face from the Shoggoth; deploy narrow models pre- and post-Shoggoth.

Coming from such a diverse spiritual, religious background like yourself, and being in organizations that are probably very religiously and spiritually diverse, part of what we’re thinking about is how Microsoft internally can be a space that allows employees to bring their whole selves to work, including religious and spiritual practices. Have you seen best practices for promoting the conversation of religion and acknowledgement of a pluralistic religious space?

One of the best examples was the Vatican hackathon I participated in—the papal hackathon. The topics, like addressing refugees’ needs, are universal, not just for Christians. It brings a moral framework like mercy and compassion into the conversation, shifting attention to interfaith dialogue via care ethics.

It almost doesn’t matter if it’s Vatican first; I can imagine it in Bhutan. Once it happens, other religions become accessible because they share care ethics. Whereas a Silicon Valley hackathon starts with “move fast and break things,” a utilitarian ethos that pushes other religions away like a dominant secular religion. Don’t worry about initial pluralism—any religion is close in latent space to others. Just start somewhere.

A lot of people are considering tech firms and Silicon Valley at large as a religion, like a new religion. What do you think about that?

In a sense, it’s a religious culture. Sociologically, it’s around charismatic leaders with extreme, unconventional views. So I’m not sure it’s a culture—it’s more like a cult.

We talked a little about frameworks of care, horizontal alignment, and challenges of hierarchy with spirit. Are there other religious or spiritual frameworks or wisdoms that you think technology designers and technology firms should look to in these times?

One main assumption in spirituality is that the journey of self-discovery is embedded within a practicing community—the inner life and outer community are one in most organized religions and spiritualities. Whereas Silicon Valley culture sees them as separate: optimizing for individual worth is a trade-off with community care. Community service, like working at the Department of Defense, is seen as time off individual paths, not a win-win. Posing it as a trade-off reflects an individualistic worldview, unchallenged. Spirituality never starts with that frame.

Within a big tech firm like Microsoft, there’s concern that bringing up religion into the workplace could cause internal conflict. While the goal of this initiative would never be to supersede other identities, it’s to bring wisdom that resonates with the majority of the world into products and consider it for holistic employees. As someone who’s thought about plurality deeply, any thoughts or advice on transforming conflict and tensions in organizations?

My current preferred framing is civic care or relational health—secularly acceptable words. Tie in spiritual practice as exercising relationship muscles, building a “six-pack of care” like on my website 6pack.care. Normalize care as an exercise, like gym or yoga, which is a culture, not a cult—no charismatic leaders. Practices like yoga, breathing, or Zen straddle religion/spirituality and civic exercise. They’re easier for leadership to admit. Once in, they’re adjacent to others, so you won’t be seen as dominated by any religion. Start with yoga or something.

So many people have seen technological innovation and human experiences/identities/positionalities as separate—the idea that you can leave your spiritual values at the door and focus on innovation has been the status quo in American corporate culture. How might you speak to that? We’re complicated and messy as humans, and we bring that to work. How are you thinking about that, especially from this context of care and making organizations stronger via muscles of care and integration of civic care?

People want fellow employees to leave religions at the door because they think theological debates are explosive conflicts, not good for morals or morale. It’s easier if we all worship mammon profits via stock vesting. But happiness/well-being relates to profit only logarithmically—it tapers off. When it does, happiness comes from relational health.

Design cooperative games to enlarge the pie, strategy-proof games where gaming/scams don’t pay. It’s not reasonable to expect all small profit-seeking companies to become spiritually enlightened, but established ones like Microsoft can afford meaning-making in the workplace. Design mechanisms where relations feel like communion.

So many big tech companies—Microsoft, Meta, etc.—are microcosms of organizations. There’s no church of individual thoughts trying to be a leader in religious pluralism. What do you think about Microsoft’s role?

Microsoft is associated with productivity, since WordStar and Lotus 1-2-3 days. It would be useful to prove that well-designed workplace inclusion of spiritual practices equals more productive teams. This argument has been used by DEI advocates for decades: biodiversity, neurodiversity, etc., lead to productivity. Somehow religion wasn’t included, but it’s unthinkable that it could be the only one where diversity doesn’t matter. Remove the ban and include religion in the “diversity makes productivity” argument.

Do you have theories about why religion was excluded from the original conversation around diversity?

The U.S. isn’t as religiously diverse as Taiwan or Singapore. In Taiwan, maximizing religion leads to checks and balances—civil behavior, no dominant religion in any district. In the U.S., “religion” often means one particular religion or school, to the exclusion of others, becoming intolerant. Phrase religious diversity as civic care or spiritual practices to include agnostics practicing yoga, avoiding monotheist dominance.

In the US in particular right now, but parts of Europe too, we’re feeling backlash to DEI—some call it the post-DEI era. What are your thoughts about navigating this type of work where its framing is not only not welcome but maybe needs revamping?

DEI felt top-down—from the federal/state government or elites, without consulting people. If consulted, we’d petition for spirituality inclusion. But agenda-setters from elite schools check religions at the door, seen as double exclusion. Solve by working with the people, not just for them.

I feel like “secular” is a big word thrown around a lot, especially for elite schools, technology companies, and institutions. What does secular mean to you? Do you think an institution can be truly secular, and what does that mean?

Secular means of this world, not the afterlife—not doing it for heaven or hell, rooted in this material world. From the Mandarin translation, it’s “世俗,” back-translating to “lay” governance, like lay people. It’s worldly, but doesn’t mean experts or priests are left out. It’s possible to have a secular/lay core as the engine of innovation, where spiritual/religious norms are useful to it. “Lay governance” has better associations than atheism, which some English speakers align “secular” with. Worldly semantics are richer for bridging.

A lot of religious people use technology in everyday life, but more are using it as part of faith—accessing scriptures on apps, attending services on Zoom. Are there any techno-religious practices you’ve adopted in your spirituality and religious life, you and your family? Also, any spaces you think are promising or exciting for technology to mediate and enhance religious/spiritual life?

For spiritual practice, many confess to chatbots. People of certain affiliations set personas or system prompts to check behaviors against norms. In text-based religions with written scriptures/interpretations, AIs do good work checking actions against teachings. It’s neither positive nor negative—I see uses both ways. Religious leaders need to reconcile with it like psychiatrists with self-help chatbots, and design together.

Looping back to text-based religions and how AI is good at text—but certain sects don’t want text taken literally; the core is moving community interpretation over time, with text as basis. The Bible has been translated many times, stuff mistranslated. How do you foresee that being mediated? Via engagement of faith leaders/communities with diffused AIs?

By bringing up text-based religions, I’m saying people can self-service for consulting meanings. But there’s also a community of care, and spiritual practice in the community. The ontological “what to follow” can be seen as orthogonal. It’s good they’re orthogonal—in the workplace, focus on the horizontal care side of religion (spiritual practice community). Leave rule-lawyering to organized religion; support with tech, but focus co-pilots on relational horizontal care.

Anything else you want to speak to about this intersection of technology, spirituality, religious practice—internally or externally, things you’re worried about, or self-questions?

It’s interesting the Catholic Church is taking human solidarity/meaning in the AI age as main business—Pope calls himself Leo like the industrial revolution Leo who organized unions. It points to organization/policy innovations from spiritual/moral views, institutions around mutual care. You don’t need organized religion to innovate, but it helps as scaffolding with centuries of norms.

If Microsoft is about organizational productivity around shared human meaning (not reducing white-collars to cogs), learn from the Pope and non-secular innovators, bring into secular settings via policy/product/pro-social design. Import innovations grown in religious land but useful secularly.

When we think about this industrial revolution, automation, future of work—maybe people working less—what do you think the role of spirituality and religion is in that?

It will become the main meaning maker. Already in Belgium, right to four-day work week; soon everywhere, then three-day, two-day. Like five-day week made unions possible (no time with six/seven days), shorter weeks give time for solidarity/mutual care, much spiritual in nature.

There’s so many types of work and “productivity.” I come from a place with more physical work like agriculture, fixing machines. Those jobs aren’t automating as rapidly, though we’ve seen it in agriculture. What do you think about that divide between working classes—like blue-collar vs. white-collar in America?

There’s also “new collar”—focus on soft skills, not traditional education (as a high school dropout, I endorse). New collar is the ability to work with machines, not under/above as blue/white signify—communication, teamwork, adaptability, curiosity, creativity, care. Productivity comes from adapting to machines that align people. Work with them for better civic muscle, not input to overseeing machines and reducing humans to cogs, or full Luddite.

There is more dignity in collaborative work, but requires steerable machines for community meaning-making, not just Silicon Valley profit. Microsoft can get behind civic tech, empower people closer to pain for meaningful making without colonization—humble pro-social design. Microsoft apologized on GitHub; open source communities don’t see it as enemy anymore.

Any last thoughts for the research interview?

Just because machines are good at something doesn’t mean we abdicate everything to them—otherwise like sending robots to the gym because they lift weight.

Microsoft is best designing exoskeletal scaffolding so we lift better weight together while increasing civic muscle, not automating away relational care and letting muscles atrophy. The choice is clear.