Cardinal Winning Lecture 2022
RenAIssance?
Challenges of Artificial Intelligences to education and formation
Dr Paolo Benanti T.O.R
Pontifical Gregorian University and Advisor to Pope Francis
19 NOVEMBER 2022
11.15-12.30
BUTE HALL
UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
(Mass will precede the lecture in the University Chapel at 9.30am)
Biography – Paolo Benanti
A native of Rome, Paolo Benanti was born in 1973 and is a Third Order Franciscan whose research interests include ethics, bioethics and the ethics of technology. His academic work focusses on approaches to innovation: the impact of the digital age; biotechnology as it relates to human flourishing; biosecurity, neuroscience and neurotechnology.
He completed his Masters in 2008 and Doctorate in 2012 in Moral Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University. His doctoral thesis – bearing the title, The Cyborg: The body and bodily existence in the post-human age, won the prestigious Belarmino-Vedona Prize.
Since 2008 he has been a lecturer at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Theological Institute of Assisi and the Pontifical Leoniano College in Anagni. In addition to his institutional courses on sexual morality and bioethics, his research is in neuroethics, technology ethics, artificial intelligence and the post-human. He was a member of the Artificial Intelligence Task Force to assist the Agency for Digital Italy. He is an ordinary academician of the Pontifical Academy for Life with a particular mandate for the world of artificial intelligence. At the end of 2018, he was selected by the Ministry of Economic Development as a member of the group of thirty experts tasked with drafting the national strategy on artificial intelligence. Fr Benanti is an advisor to Pope Francis and the Vatican on artificial intelligence.