Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith Father Paolo Benanti: Finding the heart and soul of AI
Jan 31, 2023
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Monastery Mornings Shape an Ethicist Engineer
- Paolo Benanti begins each day with early morning prayers with his six-person Franciscan community to remember their shared horizon.
- He then teaches ethics, bioethics, and technology at university, linking his engineering past to questions about what it means to be human.
Technology As Displacement Of Power
- Every technological artifact is a displacement of power and a form of social order, not just neutral tools.
- Benanti recounts a Georgetown lecture about Robert Moses showing how highway design intentionally shaped who could access parks, linking design choices to social outcomes.
Vatican Role Grew From Casual Conversations
- Benanti's Vatican role grew from conversations and shared questions rather than a planned path; relationships opened opportunities.
- He describes meeting Microsoft people at the Italy UN embassy event, which catalyzed collaboration on AI ethics.