If the Vatican is far from being at the forefront on social issues such as the right to abortion, it knows how to surround itself when it comes to technology.
Pope Francis on Friday named Demis Hassabis, the head of Google DeepMind, as a member of the Vatican's science body, a new sign of the Church's interest in artificial intelligence (AI).
The British researcher is one of the new experts appointed by the Pope as ordinary members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, alongside Nobel Prize winners in physics Andrea Ghez and Didier Queloz, the Holy See announced in a press release.
Aged 47, this entrepreneur, rewarded with numerous distinctions, co-founded Deepmind in 2010, bought by Google in 2014. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, founded in 1603, is the Vatican body responsible in particular for science, technology, bioethics and epistemology.
Its members are not chosen on denominational criteria.
“Serious risks” linked to new technologies
In December, the Pope invited the international community to adopt a binding treaty to regulate the use of AI, emphasizing the importance of ethics in the face of “serious risks” linked to new technologies.
Google DeepMind is a leading artificial intelligence company with commercial applications in simulation, e-commerce, and gaming.
She is at the origin of the super computer program AlphaGo, which caused a sensation in 2016 by beating Lee Se-Dol, South Korean grandmaster of the game of go.