Religion, Money, and AI...
Interview with Alex Jones co-founder at Hallow
The Tech Revolution in Religion is Here…
I sat down with Alex Jones, co-founder and CEO of Hallow, a religion tech startup focused on praying and meditation. Yep, you read that right. Religion tech. Now, for the religious out there, you're probably already nodding your head to this massive and key category; for the rest, it may be enough to say that Hallow is the #1 catholic app in the world, has more than 3mm downloads, and was the first religion and meditation app to crack the Apple App Store Top 10, beating popular apps like Instagram and TikTok. Ever.
Alex and I had a wild chat - we went from deep religious and philosophical discussions to nerding out about the nitty-gritty of running a Public Benefit Corporation. We got into the role of tech in modern-day spirituality and the controversial relationship between money and religion. We wrap up by trying to answer an increasingly important question: if we continue down this path, could AI become a new form of god?
You can listen now on Spotify, Apple or watch the video below. Please reach out with any feedback or comment, always happy to chat.
In this Sobremesa, we chat about:
(00:00) Coming Next
(00:35) Introducing Alex and Hallow
(01:42) Alex journey’s to entrepreneurship
(06:36) Launching Hallow during his MBA at Stanford
(14:28) How does Hallow differ from Calm and HeadSpace
(19:43) Can religion and money go hand in hand?
(21:53) Why bishops urged him NOT to structure Hallow as a non-profit
(23:14) What is a Public Benefit Corporation?
(30:51) Views on OpenAi moving away from a pure non-profit model
(34:38) How technology impacts religion
(38:18) The steep decline in religiosity in the US
(42:22) “I’m spiritual but not religious” fashion
(46:51) Can AI become a new form of God in the future?
(52:10) Closing remarks
Gosh how long is AI gonna stay in the headlines? I'd be really surprised if AI ever becomes "sentient" or "a God". It's just a computer program that makes really good guesses based on inputs and outputs it's been told are valid. Obviously I could be very wrong but I don't think AI is going to have as much of an impact as the internet did in the 90's/early 2000's.