Call Summary: Faith-Based Education & AI Leadership Connection

Overview

Introductory call with Eric Buess, senior software engineer and Claude Code expert, exploring shared interests in faith-based education, AI integration, and Christian technology leadership. Eric shared his remarkable 41-year coding journey, pioneering "vibe coding" since 2022, and three current projects including voice-first Claude Code interface, personal "Jarvis" agent, and a theological "Alignment Hypothesis" for rational skeptics. Gary pitched Applied AI community involvement and potential speaking opportunities.

Key Topics Discussed

Gary's Background Summary

• Career Arc: Google (2013-2017) → Police brutality activism (largest Facebook page) → Electoral reform nonprofit → Civic innovation with Andrew Yang and The Rock support → Ethereum Foundation grant → Vitalik Buterin social experiments (Montenegro, Istanbul) → Current faith focus
• Activism Learning: "Taught me a lot about different skill sets I have, but it also was very troubling to me. Just spending so much time looking at shootings. And promoting it virally"
• Faith Evolution: "I was a very nascent Christian, if I could call myself that. But like, hanging around with a bunch of people that wanted to either upload their brains to the cloud or just be immortal like Brian Johnson. It like over time, it pushed me more and more to my current faith"
• Current Focus: "Thinking deeply about how to do God's will. And I think God wants us to be in the marketplace. God wants us to be in technology. God wants us to be leaders"

Gary's 2026 Vision

• Faith-Based Schools: "Of the future that weave in AI education"
• Christian Mastermind: "Something like a mastermind community of extremely high agency Christians in industry... almost like a fraternal order"
• Society Engineering: "Men that just try to steer America into a more faithful direction, but not just like, but leveraging all the emerging tools of influence"
• School Choice: "Trump's policies around school choice have been good... The TEFA program that is allocating a billion dollars to school choice vouchers is really exciting"
• Prenda Opportunity: Shared excitement about Prenda.com and upcoming call with CEO

Eric's Technical Journey

• Origins: Started coding at age 5 on Apple II (1983), approximately 60 programming languages before ChatGPT
• Career Path: Native mobile development (before Palm Pilot) → Healthcare mobile architect → Fortune 500 data analytics consultant
• Vibe Coding Pioneer: "Since that moment [ChatGPT launch], I haven't written more than a couple hundred lines of code. Since 2022"
• First Day Innovation: Built app to auto-merge LLM code responses using unified git diff format on day one of ChatGPT
• Browser Automation: Created Chrome extension + VS Code server system to use browser subscriptions instead of paying multiple APIs
• Anthropic Connection: Met with Alex Albert (Director of Relations), pitched multi-surface subscription; Claude Max released shortly after
• Token Economics: Uses "$20,000 a month worth of API tokens for $200" through Claude Max

Eric's Three Current Projects

1. Voice-First Claude Code Interface

• Two-way real-time voice interaction with Claude Code terminal
• Works via Siri with locked screen, iOS app microphone
• Text-to-speech reads responses, interruptible, composable
• Auto-updates forms based on voice commands
• "The idea is this is like any app that I open on the terminal, I can keep working on the terminal, or I can switch to this app"
• Motivation: "Untether me from having to look close at a screen, which I've done for 46 years"
• Also: "I want more words to say more words. So if I talk to an agent around the baby, that's good"

2. Everything Agent (Personal Jarvis)

• Aggregates all siloed information: GroupMe, school websites, Teams, calendar, texts, Gmail, etc.
• LLM parses based on user context and urgency
• Sends Pushover alerts for urgent items, auto-schedules calendar
• Integrated with Limitless pendant for life logging with trigger wake phrases
• "I don't have to check any of these sources anymore. I always know what's going on with my kids"
• "Basically, I'm building Jarvis, essentially"

3. The Alignment Hypothesis

• Synthesizes physics, faith, simulation theory, and AI alignment
• Would take 366+ minutes for text-to-speech to read current version
• Tier One: "Completely just falsifiable set of predictions... about this specific training technique that allow for something like aligned moral agents"
• Tier Two: "We look back at our universe and ask... what are the surprising coincidences... does it move you closer or further away from your chosen faith"
• "Christianity maps on almost completely to this argument"
• Goal: Help rational skeptics "be able to have the freedom to make the choice, to choose to believe without feeling like... you can't force belief"
• Personal motivation: Decade of atheism after deconstruction, found this argument compelling for return to faith

Eric's Faith Journey

• Deconstruction: "The arguments I've been presented with the objective arguments. The apologetics had rebuttals and counters"
• Metacognition Impact: Learning about "fallacies and biases and things like that that allow us to assign inappropriate confidence levels without proper error bars around our faith based conclusions"
• Decade of Atheism: "I really wanted to have faith again, and I've been struggling with it for a decade"
• Return Path: "I eventually stumbled upon something that I thought for me was compelling... for other rational skeptics who were kind of scientifically literate and minded"

AI Safety Philosophy

• Core Concern: "If I could snap my fingers and make it go away, I would, but can't. So it's ubiquitous, it's here, you can't change it. So how do we use it in a wise way"
• Prompt Vulnerability: "Most people aren't aware that every AI model that's out right now you can break with a prompt"
• Red Teaming: Participates in bug bounty to find vulnerabilities before "savvy extremists"
• Anthropic Advocacy: Follows company for AI safety commitment more than product preference
• Connected with "Elder Plinus" / "Pliny the Liberator" on model jailbreaking

Programming Language Evolution Theory

• "Zeros and ones when you programmed with punch cards, all the way to tape and then... floppy disks"
• "Assembly code and then more people could access it... low level programming languages, and eventually they got polymorphism and object oriented"
• "If you look at Python for the last decade or two, you could almost read it if you didn't know how to code"
• "You can see that trajectory is in the direction of English... natural native tongue, so eventually it's going to get there"

Brian Johnson Discussion

• Eric follows Brian Johnson, has some products
• Eric's Framework: "Our risk profile, like the way we assess... should change in light of the fact that we are potentially on the brink of rapid advancement in biological and medical technology"
• Key Question: "If you knew that if you could just live long enough, you could live quite a bit longer. Would that affect anything?"
• Critique: "I don't like the cult aspect of it, obviously. And the selling the belief that we're gonna not die is, I think, beyond the pale"
• Gary's Response: "He's going to create a lot of great products... his salvation at the end of the day is kind of his problem to worry about"

Eric's Family & Faith Context

• Wife is oncologist; they moved to Tyler 2 years ago from Temple
• 4 children (5th due February 2026)
• Homeschooled children during wife's 12-year medical training
• Kids attend Grace Community School (private Christian school) where wife attended K-12
• Active in school AI integration: gives talks to CS classes, mentors through "Inspire" program
• "We put our kids there for a reason... we love it"
• Doesn't have "drive to generate this faith based micro school experiment" because satisfied with existing school

Gary's Pitch to Eric

• Applied AI Community: "I'm launching a community around Applied AI. And it sounds like that's a lot of what you do"
• Speaking Opportunity: "Have you speak... excuse to come to Austin... talk about your career"
• Target Audience: "A lot of new grads are like, what the heck do I do with my life? Like, are all jobs going to be automated away?"
• Eric as Archetype: "Someone that's like, not manually written a line of code for years now. But making a good living and has a great family. Like, I think you're a perfect archetype"
• Eric's Response: "Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Well, send me all the information you have, and I'd love to join"

Key Quotes

On Faith-Based Education:

• Gary: "I think divorcing spiritual and the other education with the other kinds of education... I think there's a great peril of thinking that you can teach moral education without talking about Christ"
• Gary: "Our school systems are so compromised, we don't even... we're so used to it that we don't even recognize how poorly they're forming our children"
• Gary: "I want them to be tech forward and I want them to have a great biblical education. And I don't want them to be surrounded by secularity five, six days out of the week"

On AI and Coding:

• Eric: "Since that moment, I haven't written more than a couple hundred lines of code. Since 2022"
• Eric: "The only code I've written since 2022 is manually applying the patch. And that's it"
• Eric: "You can turn anything on the Web or the computer into an API"
• Eric: "This is like the most exciting time of my life, really"

On Faith and Rationality:

• Eric: "You can't force belief. You know, you can't believe in a square circle kind of thing"
• Eric: "An argument that gets you to the point where I felt like I could make that choice rationally"
• Eric: "Christianity maps on almost completely to this argument"

On AI Safety:

• Eric: "If I could snap my fingers and make it go away, I would, but can't"
• Eric: "Most people aren't aware that every AI model that's out right now you can break with a prompt"

On Screen-Free Aspiration:

• Eric: "I don't want to have to do that anymore because I don't really like typing and looking at screens"
• Eric: "I want to be not tethered to a screen if I don't have to be"

Action Items / Takeaways

• Gary to send Applied AI community information to Eric
• Potential speaking engagement for Eric in Austin early 2026
• Eric may share voice-first Claude Code demos when ready
• Follow up on Alignment Hypothesis publication
• Eric interested in joining Applied AI community

Special Context

Eric as "Perfect Archetype"

Gary identified Eric as ideal speaker for addressing new grad anxiety about AI and careers - someone who hasn't manually coded in years but is thriving professionally while maintaining strong family and faith life. Represents positive vision of AI-augmented work rather than replacement anxiety.

Alignment Hypothesis Significance

Eric's decade-long journey from Christian conviction → deconstruction → atheism → return through rational framework could be valuable resource for Gary's work with skeptics and rational believers. The framework attempts to bridge scientific literacy with faith commitment.