Steven Umbrello is Managing Director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and a research fellow at the University of Turin where he directs the Ethical Research Center on Anthropology and Technology. His research applies the theology of Bernard Lonergan to artificial intelligence: what machines can and cannot do to human knowing, judgment, and dignity. He is also an associate researcher at the Collège des Bernardins, where he works on digital humanism, and he serves on the steering committee of the Anima Institute.

His books include Vigilant Hope: Preserving Human Dignity in an Age of Artificial Intelligence (Ascension Press, 2026), Can AI Ever Be Human? Consciousness Explored (The Catholic University of America Press, 2026, with Paul O’Hara), Mediated by Meaning: Consciousness and Conversion in the Thought of Jordan Peterson (Pickwick, 2026), and Technology Ethics: Responsible Innovation and Design Strategies (Polity, 2024). He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Technoethics and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics.

Previously a postdoctoral fellow at Delft University of Technology (TechEthos, H2020), a researcher at the Bruno Kessler Foundation’s Center for Religious Studies, and a Stiftung Südtiroler Sparkasse Global Fellow at Eurac Research, where he worked on the philosophy, religion, and society program.