Recently, warnings from researchers inside the world’s largest artificial intelligence labs about the rapid pace of development have led to panic about the possibility that the technology could extinguish humanity. Those warnings are predicated on the idea that—propelled by ferocious competition and a rivalry between the US and China—labs are barreling toward superintelligent models whose abilities will far surpass those of humans. But according to Father Paolo Benanti, a priest who advises the Catholic Church on AI, the handwaving over superintelligence distracts from the need for open debate about how to constrain the companies building the technology. By casting the problem as so complex that only they can solve it, he says, the big labs exclude everyone else from the conversation. “Ethics cannot be something that belongs to the board of trustees of a company. It’s something that has to be balanced, mitigated in debate in the public square.” Benanti tells WIRED. “We need democratic regulation.” In an essay published on the heels of the safety warnings, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for new AI …