The Pope's AI advisor says the technology can be worse for kids than cocaine

AI's impact on young minds can be worse than an addiction to nicotine or cocaine, said a moral theologian who advises the pope. In a Wednesday interview with one outlet's "Newsnight," Paolo Benanti said AI technologies could be "super manipulation tools. " "The emotional bending that such a kind of machine can produce in young adults and kids could be much, much worse than the addiction of nicotine or sugar or cocaine," he added. Benanti is a Franciscan friar who teaches at Pontifical Gregorian University with a focus on the ethics of technologies. He has become a go-to advisor for the Vatican.