The Vatican Takes On AI

Kara talks to Father Paolo Benanti, a Franciscan friar, theologian and AI ethics adviser to the Vatican, about why AI has become a central concern for the Catholic Church. They discuss Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI, the Church’s role in shaping a more human-centered debate and why Benanti sees today’s AI race as a question of power, democracy, belief and human dignity. Kara presses him on Silicon Valley’s influence, Peter Thiel's views on the Antichrist and whether the Vatican can serve as a public square for global AI debate. Plus: can the Church help unite countries around shared global safeguards? Come see Kara live in DC. She is sitting down with Former Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo on July 16 at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, and you can be in the room. ⁠Register now⁠. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We can imagine church in a lot of ways. One could be a pyramids 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, you know, we have a lot of different processes.

• 0:20Kara Swisher?

  Little Catholic humor for you, yeah.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it's Catholic. It's for everyone. There is space also for someone like me.

• 0:38Kara Swisher?

  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,

• 1:22Kara Swisher?

  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. And 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, Yashua Bengio. So stick around.

• 2:17Kara Swisher?

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• 3:01Kara Swisher?

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• 4:17Kara Swisher?

  Father Benanti, thanks for coming on ON.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me.

• 4:22Kara Swisher?

  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?

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, much more Pope Francis. Pope Leo is now shaping the Curia in a way that is desired. So we are in the meantime area.

• 4:43Kara Swisher?

  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.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  Well, you know, there is something that happened before in the Church. 150 years ago with an enzighlega that the name was Rerum Novarum, pushed out by another Pope and the name was Leo XIII. At that time-

• 5:05Kara Swisher?

  I think he named himself for that reason, I have a feeling.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  Yes, it's a day one, it's a day one. Like Leo XIII faced this idea of a technology pinging on the human. I'm seeing that AI has done the same things.

• 5:19Kara Swisher?

  Right, explain Pope Leo XIII, what he was discussing at the time.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, that's the point. It's interesting things because it's not steam power, the problem. The problem is that steam power was producing a shift of power in society and a leverage of things that was pushing a certain number of human beings in a really uncomfortable situation in a way in which we can define a sort of modern slavery. And today is not a matter again of digital or artificial intelligence. It's not this the hot topic of the Church. But once again, is power coming back among us as a species in a domesticated way? Like, is it in democracy or is coming wild?

• 6:05Speaker 00

  And this is a little bit the way in which Pope Leo XIV is looking at this new wave of technology in society.

• 6:13Kara Swisher?

  So why pick it now? You and I have talked about the Internet before, and the Internet's been a rising power. Why does it become critical when it comes to AI?

• 6:22Speaker 00

  With the invention of ChatGPT, that is probably for everyone, the equivalent of AI, is not true, but this for the pop culture is the same things. My smartphone is thousand times, five hundred, thousand five hundred times most powerful than the computer that bring us to the moon, but is not able to compute something like that. And so we need a new centralized form of computation that this time has the shape of data center and cloud. What is the problem? That this new centralization of data center is in some way collecting all the part of our life that we digitize in the last thirty years.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  And actually, a data center is someone else computing that can simple compute and control what's going on in our life. And we are see a lot of countries that are doing this really, really effective, try to think to China or rather non-democratic country around the world. And so who is controlling the hardware now is controlling also a huge part of our life? That sound to me really political.

• 7:29Kara Swisher?

  Right, and so therefore the church needs to weigh in here. Now, you have a background in engineering. You did make a note that AI has been here before, it's just taken off in this kind of Cambrian explosion is the word I tend to use. I mean, obviously, everyone remembers Galileo, but the church has been very deeply involved in science in not necessarily a negative way for many, many, many different times. Explain the juxtaposition between faith and science.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  Well, you know, from my core point of view, we are talking of an institution that is two thousand year old. So it makes sense that the perspective was not always the same. When the first Christian people arise, they have to confront with a really well-shaped form of power that was the Roman Empire and the other country. It's interesting that Christians, in a different way from other religion, don't try to found their own regulation on God. But they found a reason. Why? Because if we believe as a Christian that there is a God that make us, everything that he made in us is not against his will. And so, everything that is reasonable is according in some way with God's will.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  And that produced during this twenty century of history, a lot of different reflection. Don't forget, for example, that one of my friars, thirteenth century, the name was Raimondo Lull, produced a book, and the name was The Arts Magna, in which he started to think, well, can we say all the truth on God with that simple permutation of words? And you have this double wheel things with a lot of words that are turning on. And a couple of centuries later, Leibniz looked at that and said, wow, that is fantastic. Let's move to logic. And when you are typing something on a computer today,

• 9:19Speaker 00

  you are using logic that is driven by Leibniz, that is founded on a Franciscan reflection. Or you can have things like the genetic studies. Mendel, he was a monk. So this idea that if the nature is a gift of God, you can investigate, you can acquire it without fear, is something that belonged at least to some tradition inside the church.

• 9:41Kara Swisher?

  And when you think about the history of the church, people don't realize there's a lot of scientists who are various Jesuits or Franciscans throughout history. I was taught a lot. I went to Georgetown, I was taught by Jesuits.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Me too.

• 9:53Kara Swisher?

  Many of whom were scientists. One of the things that's important is that the church can weigh in on these things. And there's been pushback from politicians, stay in your lane, church essentially, or pope. Stay in your lane, pope, I think is the message they're trying to deliver.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  That was something that probably find the most powerful way with secularism, you know? In which they, someone start to say, well, you belong to a specific place that is the sacristy of the church. So stay there, don't go around, like, you know, like a wild beast in the zoo, if I can use these images. But now, let me push a little bit back on what does it mean to be a member of the church? If you do the priest, so only the priest, you should preach the gospel during the mass. And so if the Gospel say you have to look at everyone in this place like a brother and a sister, isn't it a political message?

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Isn't it something that go beyond a serious displacement of power that usually has the tendency to frame, divide, and in some way shape the order in society? So of course, that is not always clear in the history. When some Pope wrote to the slave, you know, behave like a brother of your owners and to the owners, behave like a brothers to the slave, at that time, 20 century ago, was not thinkable that slavery was something that is unjust. Today, if you would like to be Catholic and you think that slavery is acceptable, you are not Catholic. So it's an ongoing process, but it's political too.

• 11:34Kara Swisher?

  Right, right. So let's talk about the encyclical specifically. Scott and I discussed it on Pivot and we were very impressed by it. In it, the Pope calls for government regulation protecting children, he warns against AI warfare. Talk about the conversations as he was writing this and the process. I'd love to understand where your role was in shaping it and where his mind was, because putting these things out is a very big signal by the Pope that this is an important topic. So talk about the creation of it.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Well, you know, we can imagine church in a lot of way. One could be pyramids with a big boss on the top that's simple as a lot of worker done and he says something and everything happened. 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, you know, we have a lot of different processes.

• 12:27Kara Swisher?

  Little Catholic humor for you, yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it's Catholic, it's for everyone. There is space also for someone like me. Well, so what does it mean? That mean that we can imagine church like a cake with yeast. So the yeast is something that is used to produce an augmentation of the shared thinking. So it's not important to be in the Catholic Church that the Pope has a clear view and understanding of an issues, but it's much, much more important that this belong to every faithful. And this is a process that need time, need reflection. So when something surface. On the top level of the church, so as a pope document, that means that there was a huge digestion of a lot of different things.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Let's be back to Leo XIII. Leo XIII was a nuncho, that mean a diplomat of the church to the northern Europe. And he saw what the steam power and machine are doing to the worker and to the transformation. He reflect on that with a lot of people inside the church in Europe. When he was elected pope, he was able to connect the dot and produce this rerum novarum that say to the church, "Look, we are not in the sacristy. We are with the step in the world and with the brain in the heaven, but we have to walk on this, on this world with other people." And that was really interesting, because the same things probably is happening here with Pope Leo XIV. So there are a lot of people that are reflecting on that.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  Laypeople, professor in the university, strange Franciscan like myself, doing strange things like this discussion with you. And this is producing a sort of a global awareness. It start with Pope Francis, really clear, 2018, then 2019, 2020. In 2020, it's not just a matter of what's happening inside the church, but it's also something that happened in everyone life with Covid pandemic. And Covid push every generation on digital means. Right. And so digital become top one of the topics. So you can go back and see that the topic of AI is surfacing a lot of time in discussion on autonomous weapon,

• 14:42Speaker 00

  in discussion of child protection, in discussion of ethical approach to the algorithm. Then it become a little bit more consistent in a note from the congregation of the doctrine of the faith and education de castri, because education is touched by AI. And the name was Antigua et Nova, Old and New Things. And then Pope Francis pass away. And Pope Leo is the first document that he simple propose out, this document.

• 15:14Speaker 00

  Was signed and published. Meanwhile, a couple of office in the Holy See that we are used to call the Castor. The Castor of Faith, the Castor of Integral Human Development and the Castor of Education was involved in producing the blueprint of the document. And the Pope touched it with his personal style. So if you find that Santa ghosting quotation or something like that, you can see how he's finishing this collective work. Because the Pope take the duty to offer to the Church a reflection that he said, for me, is what I'm understanding as a correct reflection.

• 15:56Speaker 00

  But it's not his own reflection, it's a reflection of the whole Church. And this is typical.

• 16:01Kara Swisher?

  The whole Church had been discussing it, starting with Francis.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:04Kara Swisher?

  And then it rises up to him, as it's been worked on. And he presumably was involved in the part where Francis was focused on.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also because he was in charge of the new bishop. And he invited me as a Cardinal to talk to the new bishop about the challenge of the new media, the digital media and AI. And he has also a scientific background, so he's not far from the topic. Now he take the duty of the office to tell to the Church, look, it's not a secondary element in everyday life. It's something that they shape our personal opinion, the way in which we interact with either, with other people. We are seeing something like a companion chatbot that can shape forever what we understand of intimacy. So let's have a reflection on it. This is not the end of the reflection.

• 16:56Kara Swisher?

  No, the beginning, the beginning of it. But he could have picked anything at all to start with. But this to him was central, was what was happening with our relationship with AI and the tech executives that he does call out in some ways negatively and sometimes positively. Because when he presented the letter, Anthropic co-founder Chris Ola was seated right there with him on the dais. Anthropic is currently suing the Trump administration after refused to let the Pentagon use Claude for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Talk about, was that a pointed rebuke to the Trump administration's handling of AI? Or in general, the kind of reflection that he was trying to establish was a more safety focused, human focused?

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Well, we have to recognize that in this moment, the leading innovation on AI happening to country, that is, United States and China. But we have do not forget that the majority of faithful probably belong to Africa and Latin America. And so when you see a document like Magnifica Humanitas, you have to see a more broader approach. It's not focused on Silicon Valley, it's focused on humanity. And if I have to express the percentage of preoccupation of the Pope, probably will be on the effect of the most fragile in the world, that will be the Global South. And the idea that the big tech was present when the press release of the document was

• 18:24Speaker 00

  there, it's not to be understood as a picking one because he is faithful to the document. Because the Pope see really clearly, it's not enough. An ethical approach that is decided by someone in the bottom room without a big sharing with other people. And this means that, you know, maybe Anthropic is the most active on AI, but it's not the way that the Church is looking too. Every human beings, in the same fact that is a human beings, has the right to participate to the debate. So we are simple finding a dialogue, also with people that are building such kind of things.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  We do not pretend that they are in the same page where we are. I think that this is a huge expression that Pope Francis leave to the Church. This ability to be open to the difference without fear and without the urgency to say we have to think everyone the same things now.

• 19:21Kara Swisher?

  Right, right, right. So it goes up through committees and then he adds to it, right? Is that correct? And he just keeps getting worked on. And this is something you had been interested in and many others. Did he write it himself or he works with a group? As with any president or political figure, they work with a lot of people in formulating it, correct?

• 19:42Speaker 00

  Well, we can understand probably the best metaphorical image to understand that is like when a plant grow. You take water that come from outside, but it's filtered from the roots. So there is not a scientific committee that advise him directly. But scientific and technological people was involved in a lot of satellite reflection that happened in the Holyci. Last September, there was one really big in which people like Joshua Benjo, Hinton, and other scientists, Max Tegmark, was talking about the danger of superintelligence. Or we have the wrong call for AI ethics that's much more directly addressed to people like

• 20:27Speaker 00

  the tech guys, the people that make business on this, or to the international organization. So all these different sources become something that is a nutrient for the developing of the process. But you cannot have this paragraph is connected to this, this, this.

• 20:45Kara Swisher?

  Right, right, right.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  Is a digested things.

• 20:51Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 21:06Kara Swisher?

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• 23:54Kara Swisher?

  Popleio sees work as a "fundamental dimension" of the human experience and AI is threatening that. That's why it was called magnificent humanity, essentially. Last week, the tech companies are trying, Anthropic, OpenAI's foundation and several other companies, that's a $500 million effort, which seems small, to help states and employers prepare workers with the effects of AI on jobs in the economy. Talk about what you're all hoping. You know, I consider it reputation laundering. Maybe it's both that they really mean it or something. But let's talk a little bit about what the Pope hoped to have happen here, just that the dialogue begins, or what impact was the Church hoping to have here as a whole?

• 24:35Speaker 00

  Well, you know, clear political statement that Popleio made on day one, when he explained to the world why he picked that name, was that what the Church has to offer to the world is the wisdom of the social doctrine of the Church. Now, for people that are not like myself, a theologian that work with this world every day, what does it mean? Well, first of all, we are not in a Galileo moment, when the telescope was asked to be blessed or to be damned. Social doctrine of the Church, simple take the things as it is. The machine is here. The genius is out of the bottle. They will remain with us. And now the problem is how much is too much on how? This is the question. And this is a different perspective. But the social

• 25:20Speaker 00

  doctrine of the Church in this shape is a reflection that is 150 year old. So in 150 years, we are really clear state in multiple occasion that first, we are not the owner of solution. We are part of the debate. We are part of the dialogue. And probably the Church is also able to pour, to bring voices that otherwise will be excluded. Second things, has to be plural. There is a really interesting debate happening during the 60s and the 70s about unions. Should Christians look just for Christian unions? Well, the answer was really clear. No, because unions is something that is made to make social justice and negotiation of the paycheck is not important that you belong to the

• 26:05Speaker 00

  Church. It's much more important that you are looking for justice. And so also the solution that probably the church is expecting is not a confessional one, but is a plural one, something that can happen in a multilateral debate. And this is also politically interesting now, you know, in a moment in which multilateralism is seen like, you know, smoke in the eye, well, it's stressing things that no one should be excluded. Uh, more than one, there is another element. When you talk about regulation, it's really culturally understood. In China means, yeah, the leading party give the rules that everyone will follow.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  In Europe is much more understand as an hard law things. In United States, we have a totally different understanding. In the social doctrine of the church, regulation is also the name that you give to standard. When we produce a car, we decide that we can drive it on the right side of the curb or on the left side of the curb. And having such kind of standard is something that is avoiding accident that help to save life. So the first step is a standardization of AI in which it's really clear and transparent the definition of some of the criteria and that is bringing this technology to us. Everyone knows that the quality of data, for example, is something that produce the quality of answer.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  And if there is a demography that is underrepresented, probably the judgment of AI will be not so just on such kind of things. And this is a standard. Should we declare the the number of people or the demographic or the quality of data that are behind such kind of system? Or should they can remain secret like the recipe of Coca-Cola or Pepsi?

• 27:54Kara Swisher?

  Right, right. And so you're trying to broaden debate. Now, Popolio met with representatives from tech companies, including Meta, Google and Amazon. What do you know about the concerns he shared with them? Or what was the reason?

• 28:06Speaker 00

  Well, let me say that this is happening in a sort of event that we are calling audience. An audience is a wild animal in the sense that can happen in a one-to-one private room in which you are really free to discuss about everything and nothing happened. Or it could be a public audience. And can you imagine when you are the CIO of a company that is at the value of one trillion? If you say something that can produce the lowering of value. So in that case, they are really, you know, hard guard related. And it's not easy that a personal talking up. Or it can happen in a plural way.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  That is much more official, diplomatic, with a lot of, you know, dancing style. And so the speech that you are talking about happen in a really different condition. So we can imagine that in one to one private audience. I was in a private audience between Microsoft guys and Pope Francis. The debate was really free. Because you can say what you want and nothing surface. In a public moment with pictures, shaking of hands, every declaration.

• 29:18Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  Could be a nuclear weapon. And so it's much less.

• 29:22Kara Swisher?

  Much less. But he's been, but Pope has been trying to reach out to talk to different tech people to also get their insight, presumably.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  Yes, it's a two way discussion.

• 29:31Kara Swisher?

  But at the same time, there's been some that have been very critical. Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, he was also in Rome ahead of the encyclical's release where he gave a series of talks, including one where reportedly said the Antichrist would be, quote, "a Luddite who wants to stop all science." What is he doing from your perspective? He's called people like me Antichrist, things like that, like that.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Probably you think that I'm a communist.

• 29:54Kara Swisher?

  Yes, what do you make of what he's up to?

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I think that is like everyone has his own ideas and blueprint, ideological blueprint. My sensibility tell me that he's not believing in democracy, is not believing in society. And he's believing that it's time for an, a society made by individual. But this is good. If something of the society is remained. So you are looking to trench your own at space and no one can trespassing. But if all the global society collapses, well, you will have not security. Now, try to think that every time in the morning I wake up and I would like to wash my teeth, I don't go and make any analysis on the water that is come out from the pipe,

• 30:44Speaker 00

  because I'm believing that the water company, other human beings, other member of my species are make what is enough to bring me the best water that they can. Welcome to the social contract. So in a really wild situation in which there is not more any social contract and you are an individual in a series with a series of individual, this is simple something that cannot work. And this is where the ideology has to face with reality. And so in my perspective, the problem with Peter Thiel is this, is pushing on an idea that is good if you have to capture some values from a still remaining society. If it will produce the collapsing of society, it will be the law of the jungle.

• 31:28Kara Swisher?

  Which I think he prefers. I think monarchy is what he's going for. Vice President J D Vance is the highest ranking Catholic in the U S government, but I'm sure you remember when he told the Pope to quote, "be careful" when talking about theology. He's been a little more muted on the encyclical. And at the same time, he's sort of asked you all not to involve yourself in this thing. Were you surprised by that? And what would you like to see from him as a fellow Catholic?

• 31:55Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I don't want to be involved in the United States politics. I'm a foreign citizen. I'm a poor Franciscan. Let me talk about theology that is easier. And probably what I see as an Italian with the Italian politics, that what you express in public, sometimes as an answer that is a politic answer and is not really connected to the word that you are expressing. So my feeling as someone that belonged to a country with a really complex politics and that probably we have to divide the content of the word by the political answer of the man that was pushing this. And so he is free as a politician and probably as a brilliant one if he was elected as a vice president to use the political term

• 32:38Speaker 00

  that he want to make his own politics. Well, if we have to meet in a church talking about the gospel, what the gospel could be a different topic, you know?

• 32:49Kara Swisher?

  But you feel that, as opposed to what these guys are saying, that the church has every right to be weighing in on this and actually making the debate wider.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  Well, my really deep faith as a Catholic is that the church cannot stop to talk about the gospel. And if the gospel bring us on some friction, it's not the first time in the history we have with a lot of different situations in the past. And we will face also this.

• 33:20Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 33:33Kara Swisher?

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• 34:15Kara Swisher?

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• 36:16Kara Swisher?

  Now, you've said this is just the beginning of the discussion about tech, and I'm going to step back and talk about the idea of the church's moral authority. So every episode we get a question from an outside expert. Here's yours. I think you'll like who it is.

• 36:29Speaker 05

  My name is Joshua Benjio, and the big question I would ask Father Paolo Benanti is the following: International collaboration on AI's safety is currently being outpaced by a competitive race to develop increasingly powerful models. How does the Vatican intend to continue leveraging? ...its unique position to unite countries around shared, human-centered safeguards for AI. Which are the main stakeholders that you believe also need to be involved?

• 37:04Speaker 00

  Hmm, well, you know, Joshua is always brilliant and he put the nail in the cube. The problem is, is it a competition and an always competition, something that is in some way good for everyone? Well, you know, competition bring a mathematical model that say winner take all. So if you win, I lose. When we face the most important thing i- i- in the world, like for example, achieving a cure for the cancer. If you and me sit at the same table and you have an idea and I have an idea, both of us have two ideas. So the difference is a zero-sum game and a non-zero-sum games.

• 37:47Speaker 00

  So if we are looking at the best outcome for humanity, we have to play a non-zero-sum games. That do not mean to not be naive, because there are sections, like for example, security, the protection of the most fragile, the in which there are to put some guardrail in action. But if the global landscape, we become at zero-sum games, we are not producing any kind of wealth, we are not producing any kind of good results for humanity and probably also for the tech company. Because you know, we can imagine a gold rush model, but with a gold rush model, well, you know, I don't know if all the money that are putting in inside this model will bring back some kind of return of investment.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  And so here is a matter of a win-win situation, which is not just a matter of being faithful to the gospel, but also a matter to being really rational on what does it mean to look to a real return to everyone and return to someone, to everybody.

• 38:48Kara Swisher?

  So what can the Vatican do to continue to leverage this? What is next from your perspective to keep these human-centered safeguards that was talked about in the encyclical in place? And who are the main stakeholders here? Who do you have to continue to be in dialogue with?

• 39:04Speaker 00

  Well, i- it's easy this kind of question because it belonged to the social doctrine of the church. So I simple have to repeat like in a catechism, some kind of point. Well, first of all, we saw really clearly, we have not the way. But we could be the square, you know? It's not easy to have a dialogue if I know that you have billions and I have billions of interest on both sides. But because church is not investing, church has not money that are going on, we could be a square in which different player can to discuss. Which player? Well, the social doctrine of the church state really clearly, and we are talking of the late 18th century, where we are not so open like we are now today, that is not for

• 39:49Speaker 00

  the elected, but is for every woman and man of goodwill. So everyone that is looking for the best good, best interest of humanity is welcome here. So the only thing is, are you open to change your mind if you see something that sound really convincing on the topic that we are discussing? This is the entrance gate. And I think that could be workable as a long time institution that is not the first time that is crossing a changing of time. So we are not the United Nation, we are not a sovereign state that globally has nuclear power or things like that. But we know something about what does it mean to be human and that there is a lot

• 40:34Speaker 00

  of voices that are asking to not be simple suppressed for the convenience of someone.

• 40:40Kara Swisher?

  Right, so you would be a square, an actual public square. I know the tech companies think they're a public square, but they're not. It's a private square owned by them, controlled by them.

• 40:49Speaker 00

  This is the mistake that we make in the first decade of the century.

• 40:53Kara Swisher?

  I've said that, you know, this has been my thing. I said Mark Zuckerberg owns.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  I give this part of your speech to my student and also they know very well.

• 41:00Kara Swisher?

  Private, it's a private city in which he doesn't help you. You don't get water, you don't get power and you pay a rent. It's just, it's not, it's not a square.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, and the funny thing here is that we use a word that has a really high value, that is democratization. Because when, you know, the fighting for civil rights produced that a black woman sit on a chair that was reserved to white people, we was democratizing a right that we wrote in a paper, but was not active in society. If now we say that democratizing something is the ability that you have to have a login and password to a social network, well, I feel that we are betraying what does it mean to democratize things.

• 41:44Kara Swisher?

  That's correct. Yeah, they love to use a lot of words that aren't true. Anyway, so you write a lot about belief. On one hand, all of Catholicism is based on believing in an all-seeing, all-powerful God. On the other hand, we have AI, a technology that, as you said, a quote, "voice that has no face, no history." And you've asked, "How do you resist the seduction of a system that sounds like it knows everything?" End quote. Talk about that idea and what can the Church teach us about what deserves to be believed? I always say to people, "There's nobody there. There's nothing there." You know, it's the most performative reflection of ourselves in a way that isn't controlled by us. So talk about what you meant by that and how do you resist the seduction of such a system with Church teachings?

• 42:30Speaker 00

  You know, I'm also a philosopher, so let me twist the two concepts together. I grew up and during my elementary school, my teacher, to make me be practical with a pencil, allowed me to draw mushroom, red mushroom with white dots. Then some other teacher persuaded me to not eat because they are toxic. So here is how we become human, not by a set of instinct, but by the transmission of the lived experience of the former generation to us. This transmission needs that, I'm sorry, we believe to such kind of things.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  You have to believe that the mushroom is toxic without tasting it, otherwise you have no chance to get by. And sometimes we believe, sometimes we have not to believe, otherwise there is no such things as a progress. And so, human nature that required to believe to someone else's experience is also required to make problem on someone else's experience. Welcome to the human journey that bring us to the moon, but bring also us to the ability to kill someone because it's different by us. And this is the, if I can express in that way, the tragedy in the sense of the playing that we are doing as humanity. Now, AI is a new act in such tragedy,

• 43:59Speaker 00

  in which we shape the way that we give for granted to acquire the quality of someone else's experience. The way that we get was a really architectural way. When we enter in the Library of Church Town, you know that it's huge, it's fantastic, and you have the scaffold with medicine, and you have the scaffold with social science. If during COVID pandemic, I tell to you, you know, if you make a mat wash with dinagret, you don't get the virus. Do you don't pick this piece of information and bring to the medicine scaffold? But you bring to probably fancy stories collected in a night bar from a drunk at Franciscan.

• 44:40Speaker 00

  Well, this way work and allow us to grow in science, allow us to criticize some kind of bias that was injected in society. Now, AI is changing. There is not anymore any scaffolding, but the machine is throwing out things. And we don't have a brain helmet, a pair of lenses, an instruction that allow us to judge what is desirable to be truth and what is not. And this is producing a lot of tension with that go between the innovation of science, like, for example, what alpha full can produce in drug discovery, and the spreading of things like, you know, conspiracy theories and other fancy story.

• 45:23Kara Swisher?

  Right. And so that's the, that is the problem. These are synthetic beings who are just giving us information, not in, not facts, information. So one of the things that's important is to understand that it's being controlled by, as you noted, a very small group of people in this private square. And Pope Leo warned about the risks of consolidating power in the hands of a few. Talk a little bit about that, because he is a pope too, and that's the power is consolidated in the hands of the pope. How could he show being more transparent to make this point? Now, the church is not, as you said, an investor. Church is not making money from it. It's just trying to collect souls presumably over time. How could he be even more transparent about making a public square more public here?

• 46:09Speaker 00

  Well, Cara, you know me and you know that I don't resist when I can make a joke. As a Roman, as an Italian.

• 46:15Kara Swisher?

  Yes, no, go ahead.

• 46:16Speaker 00

  So let's start from the starting point, the power in the hands of the Pope. You know, the Pope is someone that also confess. And you know very well that between saying something and that the people know do what you say, there is a huge, huge difference. So you can be a voice and the voice can achieve the bottom of your heart, but it's a voice. The second thing is really interesting. How can we be sure that the participation is really effective? Well, first of all, because the Church is not the authority that has to put the seal on it. So could be the square, but it's not the means. You cannot enforce these things in the force of the Church. And so you need something else. And that means that the dialogue remain as a dialogue.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  You need something that is an institution. An institution according to the law, according to John rules. They are founded on the rule of law and on this idea that the participation and the transparency and the publicity of the ruling mechanism belong to everyone. So the Church can offer a space, but the enforcement has to be made through the rule of law. That means there has to be also diverse. And it's parting of the rule of law that there are countries that can feel much more at ease with one way and countries that will feel much more at ease in another way. But they democratically and according to the rule of law produce a discussion on this topic.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  And now here is a clear window where we see that the way in which we do think is much more important than the result of the things in itself.

• 47:56Kara Swisher?

  Right. So one of the things that I've noticed, the moral authority of the Church had come into question as a result of child sex abuse scandals, et cetera, had caused a lot of people to lose faith. It seems like this is gaining. Moral authority for the church, again, like focused in on what affects average citizens and humanity, because most people in the United States right now tend to agree with what the church is saying here, even if they're not Catholics, you know, in terms of AI. I know, just as a personal thing, my son is, I'm Catholic, but I never took my children to church. My second son is going to mass every week now, and I never brought him, which is kind of interesting. But one of the things that attracts him, he's a technologist,

• 48:38Kara Swisher?

  is this moral authority of the church on not just AI, but in terms of what it means in a bigger sense. Does this give the church an ability to recover that authority, moral authority? Because it seems to with him, and that's just one case.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  You know, there is a danger in such question, because it's like if the church would like to have it, like a form of power on Christians.

• 48:59Kara Swisher?

  Right, right.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  I think it's a secondary effect of pursuing what does it mean to be faithful to the gospel. And the moment in the history in which we stress such kind of a concept is also the moment in which we lose it. And so with my feeling as a Franciscan, as someone that belonged to a saint that simply say, respect everyone and don't grasp power on everyone, is it if we have them really happy, because means that the gospel is resonating in society, the seeking for true, and the moral reflection that we are doing are shared with people. But this is not the end of the journey. We are not doing that to achieve

• 49:41Speaker 00

  this. We have to serve the human dignity, magnifica humanitas is saying. And if this is resonating with people, well, I'm much more scared that probably the damage that are produced by this transfer of power to few private hands is already produce a deep wound inside the society.

• 50:02Speaker 00

  Then, if you ask me as a theologian, is it this thinkable twenty years ago? I don't think. But this is interesting, because, you know, history can surprise us.

• 50:10Kara Swisher?

  Well, one of the things, when I think about the idea of what, you know, the church does have a moral authority, and they do seem to have their finger on the pulse of what average people think, right, about this thing. And one of the arguments I keep having with tech people is that, why are they so reasonable and you are not? And this is a church, you know, it's a hierarchical church. And so it's, it's a really interesting juxtaposition to have a church talk about democracy in the correct way, and the wealthiest people on the planet insisting on their way or no way at all. And so when you think about where it's going, what is your best case scenario here for the impact of this encyclical?

• 50:55Kara Swisher?

  And what is your biggest worry?

• 50:58Speaker 00

  Well, my best scenario is that we open up way. And so, because technology is running, probably things were running much and much and much. And in this scenario, the square is open, and we continue the dialogue. And the dialogue will also produce a changing in some view of the church. Because, of course, having, for example, what does it mean to have the responsibility as a state on a lot of people is not so well experienced in the church. And this is something that where we can have some kind of enrichment in the dialogue. What will happen? I don't know. I see that the most endangered animal here is not anymore the panda, could be the democracy as we know.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  I think that is, you know, it's an ideology that is really dangerous. Fukuyama told us that transhumanism could be the most dangerous things. I think that the end of democracy could be the most dangerous things. Because, you know, in a really technological way, you can understand democracy as an algorithm that produce a result. And I see a lot of these people say, well, it's not enough efficient. Change algorithm here, but this algorithm costs a lot of blood. It was a bloody century, the century that we simple left.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  If we forgot it, I'm scary that we are betting on someone else's blood to bring back what is important for us.

• 52:29Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, that is absolutely. I said to one of them many years ago when I was thinking about income inequality a lot, like in terms of them getting that. This is when they were just a little bit rich. Now they're really rich, like it's really, they were super rich, but not like what's happened now. And I said to the person, I've told this story before, that you're either going to have to do something about income inequality and what's going to happen here in terms of people being a permanent underclass, or you're going to have to armor plate your Tesla. That is where we're going with this. If you don't, if you're not careful and you're all making all the decisions and you don't care and you are less and less caring about all of humanity and more and more caring about yourself and your group of people.

• 53:11Kara Swisher?

  And I swear to God, I looked at this guy and I thought, he wants to armor plate his Tesla. That's what he want. That's the world he does want. And that terrified me. I remember thinking.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, the history will judge it. What we are remembering from Middle Age? Brilliant things or armored things that remain in a museum? You know, I, I think that the history will judge this. That do not mean that we don't have to act because it will cost a lot of blood, especially of the most fragile people. But this is where ideology come in. If you say it's better an armored Tesla that a public square in which you can walk and enjoy what is there? Hmm. I don't know if you are thinking good on this.

• 53:53Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I would agree. Anyway, Father Benanti, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for talking to me. It's always a pleasure and I will see you in Rome.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  I hope so. Thank you, Cara. Thank you for all the job that you are doing.

• 54:05Kara Swisher?

  Thank you.

• 54:12Kara Swisher?

  Today's show was produced by Michelle Aloy, Catherine Millsop, Tracy Hunt, Madeleine LaPlante Dubey, and Kalen Lynch. Nasheet Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Alyssa Soap, Eamonn Whelan, and Julia Sharp Levine. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you've fended off the Antichrist for another day. If not, that's a heresy and you'll need to seek forgiveness. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.

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