Paolo Benanti

Paolo Benanti (born 1973) is an Italian Franciscan friar and theologian who teaches at the Pontifical Gregorian University and became the Vatican’s principal adviser on artificial intelligence. He also sits on the United Nations’ AI advisory body and chaired an Italian government AI commission, making him one of the few clerics with a seat at secular AI-governance tables.

Algor-ethics

Benanti coined the term “algor-ethics” — the ethics of algorithms — to argue that AI systems are never neutral and must be steered by human values rather than raw efficiency. His project is constructive rather than prohibitive: the goal is to find a way to render moral judgments in a form a machine can act on, so that ethics is designed in from the start.

He was an architect of the 2020 Rome Call for AI Ethics, whose principles of transparency, inclusion, and accountability drew signatures from Microsoft, IBM, and multiple faith traditions. Where Pope Leo XIV sounds a warning, Benanti supplies the working framework — engagement over rejection.