Vatican and #behuman organized an event on AI

AI Experts

Rome [ENA] Under the ceiling of a venue suited for hard technological discourse, Scuderie di Palazzo Altieri in Rome, the #behuman movement convened its much-publicized panel on artificial intelligence on 12th September . The stated goal was noble, urgent, and timely: to re-center the conversation about AI on ethics, humanity, and its societal impact. The outcome highlighted the alarming gap between the AI ​​ethics industry and

the stark reality of the technology it seeks to govern. The panel's composition was its first and most critical failure. It was a homogenous echo chamber of the usual suspects: conspicuously absent was anyone who could speak to the technical mechanics of the technology in question. There were no lead researchers from Frontier AI labs, no engineers wrestling with the alignment problem, no regulators with tangible legislative power, and—most damningly—only one voice from the global south (Nigeria) or communities already being impacted by automated decision-making.

The conversation felt sanitized, pre-approved, and utterly divorced from the breakneck speed of innovation happening in private labs from San Francisco to Shenzhen. The event, undoubtedly significant in one of the countries where AI is in its infancy and where it is rarely discussed, perfectly embodied what critics now call "Theatre of Ethics," the practice of holding discussions that create the appearance of scrutiny and concern without generating any tangible accountability, policy, or change. The audience was largely composed of academics, students, and journalists, but there was much discussion about the risks and little about the opportunities for Italian farmers who could use open-source AI to monitor soil health,

or for a doctor who could use diagnostic AI in an under-resourced clinic. Despite the goodwill, the event was nothing more than a whisper in a storm.