The Pope's AI advisor

Father Paolo Benanti is a Franciscan monk and, as of late, the Pope's go-to guy on AI and high-tech.

Father Benanti starts each day with prayers and meditation, but he also calls himself a "geek" and always wears his Apple Watch. Microsoft President Brad Smith called the friar "one of the most fascinating combinations in the world" regarding his background in engineering, ethics, and technology.

✝️ 🤖 The Franciscan monk holds several positions: he is the chief AI ethicist and advisor at the Vatican, president of the Italian government's AI Commission on Information, and a United Nations Advisory Body on AI member.

Father Benanti is also a professor at the prestigious Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he teaches moral theology, ethics, and a course called "The Fall of Babel: The Challenges of Digital, Social Networks and Artificial Intelligence."

AI, especially deepfakes, have recently received close attention from the Vatican after an image of Pope Francis in a white Balenciaga puffer coast strolling through St. Peter’s Square went viral. The image was generated by Midjouney and later published on the Reddit platform. Millions of people believed it was real and reposted. Since then, Pope Francis has organized regular meetings with Father Benanti to inform himself about AI.

Brief biography of Father Benanti

Having a degree in engineering, Benanti began his spiritual quest in his youth. He took his vows as a friar and was ordained as a priest in 1999 in Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis. Still, he has been keen on technology since childhood. He received his first computer at 12 and, being a Dungeons and Dragons fan, tried to re-engineer it to play video games. After becoming a priest, Father Benanti defended his dissertation on human enhancement and cyborgs.

📹 Father Benanti’s TedX Talk "Who Will Teach Machines Ethics?"

🎙The podcast with Microsoft president Brad Smith

📖 The Book by Paolo Benanti Homo Faber

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