Enlarge image
Paolo Benanti in Rome: AI advisor for the Pope
Photo:
Fabio Cimaglia / EPA
When you think of the Franciscan Order, high-tech doesn't necessarily come to mind.
The brothers of the mendicant order live by the vow of poverty, the members should be modest and undemanding, take care of the poor and proclaim the Christian message.
Paolo Benanti is also a member of the Franciscans.
You can find a photo of the Italian online;
He wears a habit, the characteristic habit of the friars, and VR glasses.
In the Vatican, Benanti deals with the world's technical developments - more precisely: Benanti is an advisor to Pope Francis on artificial intelligence.
His audiences with the Pope are about “better explaining the more technical terms,” Benanti told the AP news agency.
Benanti once studied engineering at Rome's Sapienza University.
A year before receiving his diploma, he gave up his studies and separated from his girlfriend to join the Franciscans in his early 20s, according to the AP.
"What's the difference between a human being who exists and a machine functioning?" Benanti said.
»This is perhaps the biggest question of our time.
We are witnessing a challenge that is getting bigger every day, with a machine that is becoming more and more human.” It is not the use of AI that is the problem, but how the technology is controlled, he said.
In a podcast last year with Microsoft Vice President Brad Smith, Benanti explained that he dropped out of his engineering studies by saying that technology alone wasn't enough for him.
“What it means to be human” cannot be answered with technology alone.
Philosophy, theology and ethics were ways to better understand these questions and life, Benanti said.
He later focused on the connection between ethics and technology for his doctoral thesis at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
Benanti's doctoral thesis is entitled »The Cyborg.
Body and corporeality in the age of the posthuman«.
In the podcast with Smith, Benanti also reported on his everyday life as a Franciscan monk.
Benanti lives in a monastery in Rome with six fellow believers.
He gets up early to pray.
Then we go to university.
The technical questions of humanity
Brad Smith also met with Pope Francis last year and, according to the Vatican, discussed how artificial intelligence could be used to serve the common good.
Francis made clear his concern that AI technology could restrict human rights.
Microsoft is pumping billions into the software company OpenAI, whose chatbot ChatGPT sparked a hype about artificial intelligence.
Benanti is also a member of the UN's advisory board on artificial intelligence and head of an Italian government commission working on protecting journalism from fake news and other disinformation.
hba/AP