ROMA.- Fra Paolo Benanti wears the simple brown robe of his medieval Franciscan order as he addresses one of the most pressing issues of contemporary times: how to use artificial intelligence to enrich—and not exploit—people’s lives.
Benanti is the Vatican’s point person on technology and has the attention of Pope Francis, as well as some of Silicon Valley’s top engineers and executives.
With a background in engineering, a doctorate in moral theology and a passion for what he calls the “ethics of technology,” the 50-year-old Italian priest is on an urgent mission that he shares with Francis, who in his message of peace for 2024 pushed for an international treaty to ensure the ethical use of artificial intelligence technology.
“What is the difference between a man that exists and a machine that works?” Benanti said in an interview this week with The Associated Press during a break at the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he teaches courses, including moral theology and bioethics, to students preparing for the priesthood. “This is perhaps the biggest question of these times, because we are witnessing a challenge that deepens every day with a machine that becomes humanized.”
Benanti is a member of the United Nations Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence and head of an Italian government commission tasked with providing recommendations on how to safeguard journalism from fake news and disinformation. He is also a consultant to the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life.
Benanti says he helps “better clarify the more technical terms for the Holy Father” during his meetings. The knowledge of him proved useful for a meeting at the Vatican in 2023 between Francis and Microsoft president Brad Smith, which focused on how artificial intelligence could help or harm humanity.
Francis has made clear his concern that artificial intelligence could limit human rights by, for example, negatively impacting a migrant’s asylum application or assessing the likelihood that a criminal will reoffend.
Microsoft first contacted Benanti several years ago to get his thoughts on the technology, the friar said. In 2023, Smith podcasted with Benanti in Rome, describing the friar as bringing to the debate over artificial intelligence “one of the most fascinating combinations in the world” in terms of his expertise in engineering, ethics and technology.
Benanti, who was a year away from earning his engineering degree at Rome’s Sapienza University when he left school — and his girlfriend — to join the Franciscans when he was 20, described how AI could be a “tool really powerful,” but also described the ethical implications of a technology that could have the same capabilities as a human being, or perhaps even more.
“It is not a problem of use, but of governance,” said the friar. “And this is where ethics comes into play: finding the appropriate level of use within a social context.”
Source: With information from AP
