
Director, Technology Ethics
408-554-7890
bpgreen@scu.edu
Brian Patrick Green is the director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. His work is focused on the ethics of technology, including such topics as AI and ethics, the ethics of space exploration and use, the ethics of technological manipulation of humans, the ethics of mitigation of and adaptation towards risky emerging technologies (including ones with catastrophic risk potential), and various aspects of the impact of technology and engineering on human life and society including the relationship between technology and religion (particularly the Catholic Church). Green teaches AI ethics in Santa Clara University’s Graduate School of Engineering and formerly taught several other graduate engineering ethics courses.
His academic background includes doctoral and master's degrees in ethics and social theory from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. His undergraduate degree is in genetics from the University of California, Davis. Between college and graduate school, he served for two years in the Jesuit Volunteers International teaching high school in the Marshall Islands.
Green is co-author of the Ethics in Technology Practice corporate technology ethics resources. He is a co-chair of the Responsible Use of Technology group at the World Economic Forum and is a member of the Safety-Critical AI expert group at the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society. He also helps to convene several academic discussion groups on AI and human nature involving the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture.
Green is author of the book Space Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2021), and is co-editor of the book Religious Transhumanism and Its Critics (Lexington, 2022). He is co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Moral Theology on AI and moral theology, (Mar., 2022). A list of his academic writings can be found on his Google Scholar page, and the full text of many at his academia.edu page.
Green has been published, interviewed, or mentioned in media including America: The Jesuit Review, Ars Technica, The Atlantic, Axios, CNN.com, Forbes.com, Fortune.com, NPR (National Public Radio, WNYC), Nature, Religion News Service, Mercury News, Smithsonian.com, The Wall Street Journal, WIRED Magazine, and the World Economic Forum website.