The former actress helping Ukrainian refugees

Oliwia Dabrowska is stamped in cinematic history as the girl in the red coat, said Jonathan Edwards in The Washington Post. At age 3, she appeared in one scene of Steven Spielberg’s mostly black-and-white film Schindler’s List, as the girl whose red coat stood in stark contrast to the horrors the Nazis were inflicting on the Krakow ghetto around her. Dabrowska has lived “a regular life” in Poland in the 29 years since, she says, but was inspired to become a humanitarian activist after witnessing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “I decided to change my fear into action, into helping people,” she says. Dabrowska and her mother drove 130 miles to the Ukrainian border, where they spent weeks ferrying about 100 refugees to various Polish cities. She’s also delivered aid packages, raised money, and helped handle refugee logistics. One refugee stood out to Dabrowska: a boy who was so distraught that he started vomiting. “He was very quiet, and his eyes were so big and lost,” she says. “Every child there has big lost eyes.” The refugees remind her of the Jews in Schindler’s List. “There were and still are a lot of children,” Dabrowska says, “and I saw this little girl in the red coat in every child.”

The Vatican’s AI specialist

Father Paolo Benanti is helping the Catholic Church understand how artificial intelligence will transform the world, said Madhumita Murgia in the Financial Times (U.K.). Benti, a Franciscan monk who lives near Vatican City, completed his Ph.D. in the ethics of human enhancement technologies, including AI, at Georgetown University. Now the 48-year-old teaches at the Pontifical Gregorian University, instructing theologians and priests on the ethical implications of cutting-edge technology. He also counsels Pope Francis, who has serious reservations about AI. “The idea that if we transform human beings into data, they can be processed or discarded, that is something that really touches the sensibility of the pope,” Benanti says. Church leaders are particularly worried that AI may worsen inequality. “If you look at what happened to children and the elderly in the first industrial revolution, they were either overused or excluded by the changes in society,” Benanti says. “The way AI could reshape the way in which wealth and power is distributed could be really unmerciful for the most fragile ones.” But Benanti is by no means anti-AI, and he’s arranged meetings between Francis and Microsoft President Brad Smith and other tech leaders. “I am interested in how this AI can change the shape of trust, truth, and knowledge,” Benanti says.