The Vatican Takes On AI

**Paolo Benanti** (0:00)
We can imagine church in a lot of ways. One could be a pyramid with a big boss on the top, and he says something and everything happens. That's not the church that I know, especially because I belong to Franciscan, and we are used to say as a joke, we more than an order, we are a disorder. That means that we have a lot of different processes.

**Kara Swisher** (0:20)
A little Catholic humor for you.

**Paolo Benanti** (0:22)
Yeah, it's Catholic, it's for everyone. There is space also for someone like me.

**Kara Swisher** (0:38)
Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is Paolo Benanti, a Franciscan friar, Catholic priest, and one of the world's leading experts on the ethics of artificial intelligence. Father Benanti has advised the Italian government, the UN, and two popes on technology, and some of his insights are reflected in Pope Leo's encyclical on AI, Magnificent Humanity. In that formal letter to Catholics around the world, Leo called for an artificial intelligence that serves humanity, not one that would take the place of human intelligence and creativity. Benanti has a background in engineering and teaches moral theology as a university professor. He also has a healthy skepticism of tech oligarchs, as the pope does, who stand to profit from AI. I'd love to talk to the pope obviously about this topic, but I've known about Benanti for a while, and I know he's had a real impact on the thinking of the church, which has been bubbling upward since before this pope with Pope Francis, and the idea of what technology does to society. I think it's critical that the church and other leaders have a role in this. In fact, it's turned out that the pope has more of an impact on Silicon Valley and their thinking than I thought possible, and I'm glad to see it. I am a lapsed Catholic, but I really do respect what the pope is doing now, and it almost gets me back into the church. We'll see. Our expert question today comes from computer scientist and AI ethicist, Yoshua Bengio. So stick around.
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**Kara Swisher** (4:02)
Father Benanti, thanks for coming on On.

**Paolo Benanti** (4:05)
Thank you for having me.

**Kara Swisher** (4:06)
Just for people who don't know, you're a Franciscan friar, a moral theologian, and you also advised Pope Leo XIV on AI. I believe you advised the previous pope also, correct, on technology issues.

**Paolo Benanti** (4:18)
Yeah, much more Pope Francis. Pope Leo is now shaping the Curia in a way that is desired, so we are in the mean times area.

**Kara Swisher** (4:28)
Right, right, right, exactly. So talk about why is the rise of AI a faith and religion issue?
And you had been talking about this before.

**Paolo Benanti** (4:37)
Well, you know, there is something that happened before in the church, 150 years ago with an encyclical that the name was Rerum Novarum, pushed out by another pope and the name was Leo XIII.

**Kara Swisher** (4:50)