Paolo Benanti says major AI labs behave like a “cartel”

Paolo Benanti, a priest and scholar of philosophy, theology, and technology who advises the Catholic Church on AI, told Wired that warnings about superintelligence capable of destroying humanity distract from the need for public debate over how to govern the technology. He supports democratic regulation and says standards for keeping models under human control should not be designed by the major labs, which have a self-interested stake in setting the industry’s rules and could behave like a “cartel.” Benanti is less interested in restricting development methods because he fears that could harm innovation.

He also questions the quasi-religious way parts of the industry describe superintelligence. Wired notes that OpenAI and Anthropic have supported calls for a slowdown while preparing to go public, with billions of dollars at stake; Anthropic declined to comment, while OpenAI and Google DeepMind did not respond to the magazine’s requests. Benanti does not formally represent the Holy See.