Dr Abeba Birhane, PI and Founder of the AI Accountability Lab at the ADAPT Centre and Trinity College Dublin’s School of Computer Science and Statistics, recently joined the Vatican’s Future of AI dialogue, convening leading international experts to discuss the ethical, social and institutional implications of advanced AI.
Organised by the Vatican Commission of Artificial Intelligence (VCAI), chaired by Cardinal Michael Czerny, the dialogue was guided by Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI, and explored the impact of AI on human dignity, agency and the common good. Participants included Max Tegmark, Stuart Russell, Gary Marcus and Valérie Pisano.
Addressing concerns around existential risk, Dr Birhane challenged narratives of “rogue AI” and “loss of control”, arguing that they distract from the immediate harms of existing AI systems, including the concentration of power, widening inequality, environmental damage and erosion of fundamental rights.
She emphasised that these narratives risk shifting responsibility away from the people and institutions developing and profiting from AI.
“What the rogue AI and loss of control framing does is: remove accountability from the actual human building and benefiting from these systems [..], shifting attention away from actual urgent problems [concentrations of power, ever-widening inequality, normalising of injustice and regression on fundamental rights, and environmental destruction] towards hypothetical first world problems,” she said.
Dr Birhane also stressed that AI-related failures are often rooted in human decisions, negligence and institutional shortcomings, rather than technology alone. She called for greater accountability from those who choose to develop and deploy AI systems and must answer for the harms they cause.
Her contribution highlighted the need to keep human responsibility, accountability and fundamental rights at the centre of global conversations about AI.
