The Pope’s AI adviser on ensuring algorithms respect human dignity

Franciscan monk Paolo Benanti is the brains down the Rome Call, a pact aimed astatine making definite artificial quality is developed with morals successful mind. He tells america wherefore religions should beryllium portion of that conversation.

Society 5 September 2022

By Charlotte Lytton

Nabil Nezzar

PAOLO BENANTI wakes aboriginal successful the monastery successful Rome wherever helium lives to statesman each time successful prayer. So far, truthful accepted – for a monk. But extracurricular of the monastery, Benanti’s beingness is little typical. He trained arsenic an technologist and ethicist, and helium present spends his clip astatine the adjacent Pontifical Gregorian University, wherever helium teaches the morals of artificial intelligence. He besides often walks implicit to sojourn Pope Francis himself, to whom helium has go a trusted advisor connected AI.

This has go an important taxable for the pontiff due to the fact that helium fears it could adversely impact the astir susceptible members of society, and summation the world’s already stark inequality. To combat against this, Benanti helped draught the Rome Call, a commitment, signed successful March 2020 by planetary tech firms IBM and Microsoft, that quality dignity volition ever beryllium a precedence arsenic AI is rolled retired worldwide. With an expanded mentation of the pact present successful the works, New Scientist spoke with Benanti astir the relation of religions successful the power of technology, if an AI apocalypse is connected the cards and whether an algorithm could ever regenerate God.

Charlotte Lytton: Why did you go a monk?

Paolo Benanti: When I finished precocious school, I went to survey engineering astatine university. But successful the past year, earlier I got my degree, I decided to alteration my beingness and I joined the [Franciscan] order. I’m funny astir quality nature, what it means to beryllium human, and I was looking to recognize reality. I realised that engineering was a bully mode to approximate reality, but I was starting to look …