DOUGLAS CHARLES SMITH

Keynote speaker · Author · Former chief executive, engineer and economist

In May, Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical. It is about artificial intelligence. Every news outlet, podcast, parish, diocese, university and Catholic institution in the world now has an urgent subject, and very few people equipped to speak to it.

The Apocalypse Game book series is about what the Pope wrote about, and goes a step further to encompass the coming idolatry of AI that I predict.

I am an experienced public speaker and make available these topics.

The New Idolatry
What Pope Leo XIV's encyclical actually warns about.

Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical is about artificial intelligence, and the Catholic conversation since has been conducted in the language of ethics and policy. In this man’s opinion, the gravest warning about AI is neither of those. It concerns idolatry — what happens when a technology stops being used and begins to be trusted, depended upon, and finally adored. Most Catholics were taught idolatry as Old Testament history. It is the likeliest shape of the next generation's falling away.

For thought leading forums and magazines, podcasts, dioceses, seminaries, formation days and universities.

I Helped Build the Last One:
What mobile broadband taught me about artificial intelligence

I spent my career building the internet and mobile broadband — the last technology to rewire human life inside a single generation. Nobody in those rooms asked whether it should be built; only who would build it first. Artificial intelligence is the same story, faster, with one difference: a network cannot be worshipped, and a thing that answers you can. What that means, from someone who was in the room.

I spent my career at Ericsson through the build-out of cellular and mobile broadband internet — first as an engineer, later as founding chief executive of Ericsson Government, the U.S. division I built from the ground up to run classified programs for the federal government. I watched one general-purpose technology become civilizational infrastructure inside a single working life. I am watching it happen again, faster, and I speak about what it will cost us if nobody names it.

For podcasts, universities, civic forums, executive roundtables and professional groups.

My Personal Apocalypse

I have known God was real since I was a small boy. I spent fifty-seven years certain His mercy was meant for somebody else. This is the account of what it took to change my mind — a car at a hundred and thirty-five miles an hour, a gale in the North Atlantic, a sign in the sky I had no right to ask for, and a darkness that finally let go. For anyone who believes every word of the faith and has quietly exempted himself from the best part of it.

For parishes, missions, conferences, retreats and Catholic media.

FORMAT

Each talk is a sixty-minute module: a forty-five-minute address followed by fifteen minutes of moderated questions. Custom topics on request.

BOOKING

I do not list a fee, because it depends on travel, audience and whether the event includes books. Tell me what you are planning and I will tell you what it costs.

Write to dc@dcsmithbooks.com with your organization, the date, the location, the approximate size and type of audience, and your budget range. Or fill out the form below.

LOGISTICS

Wireless lavalier or headset preferred. HD projector and screen with HDMI if slides are used. A small table for a computer, no podium. Recording for internal archive by prior written consent; broadcast negotiated separately. Travel and accommodation for events outside the immediate Gulf Coast region.