Italian
With the essay “Human in the Loop. Human Decisions and Artificial Intelligences” (Mondadori Università), Father Paolo Benanti won the seventh edition of the international award “Economics and Society” promoted by the Centesimus Annus Foundation pro Pontifice.
The initiative, born twelve years ago, has a biennial frequency and aims to reward works that stand out for their original contribution to the deepening and application of the Social Doctrine of the Church, and are recognized for their doctrinal soundness, as well as being understandable to the general public.
Artificial intelligences are present in every aspect of daily life and as Paolo Benanti writes on his official website dedicated to ethics, bioethics, and technology: “I try to focus on the ethical and anthropological meaning of technology for Homo sapiens: we are a species that has inhabited the world for 70,000 years transforming it, the human condition is a techno-human condition…”.
The book. Artificial intelligences permeate many aspects of daily living: searching the internet, applying for a loan, looking for a job, and even getting to know a person through a platform all happen through the action of various artificial intelligence algorithms. These technologies, precisely because they are present in the background of existence, become almost invisible and unknown in their true nature. Trying to make the action of these tools visible and understandable, and asking what to do to manage them and how not to exclude humans from decision-making, is the goal of this text. In the book, the author takes on the challenge of keeping humanity capable of control in an era where machines increasingly become substitutes for human decisions.
The author. Paolo Benanti, born in 1973, is a Franciscan of the Third Regular Order and deals with ethics, bioethics, and ethics of technologies. In particular, his studies focus on innovation management: internet and the impact of the Digital Age, biotechnologies for human enhancement and biosafety, neurosciences and neurotechnologies. He obtained his license in moral theology in 2008 and his Ph.D. in moral theology in 2012 at the Pontifical Gregorian University. His doctoral dissertation entitled “The Cyborg. Body and corporeality in the posthuman era” won the Belarmino-Vedovato Award. He was part of the Artificial Intelligence Task Force to assist the Agency for Digital Italy. He is a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life with a specific 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 a group of thirty experts tasked with developing the national strategy on artificial intelligence and the national strategy on technologies based on shared registries and blockchain.(Photo featuring Father Paolo Benanti – Siciliani Agency)
