Il Sole 24 Ore is the leading Italian financial newspaper of record, owned by Confindustria, the Italian employers’ federation.

L’intelligenza non sta dentro le macchine, è umana Nel suo ultimo libro Yi Tenen, docente di letteratura alla Columbia University, pone l’intelligenza artificiale dentro un contesto critico di Luca De Biase.

Full text in Italian here. Automated translation as follows:

“There is no denying it, artificial intelligence automates many tasks of intellectual work. We need to prepare.” How? “Work that is automated loses value,” says Tenen. “But work that serves to solve difficult problems, on the other hand, increases in value. The next phases of the development of artificial intelligence will deal with the contextualization of technologies in different cultures. Generative artificial intelligences must, for example, learn which sentences are offensive in which society. The machine must be trained to deal with differences in context. The best engineers are trying to understand social dynamics and humanities scholars are becoming increasingly aware of digital technologies. There is a convergence between disciplines. Those who understand it produce value because they participate in cutting-edge design. This convergence is essential for problems that do not have a single right solution.” Education is transformed: “Engineering becomes a humanistic discipline. Social sciences become technological. And work changes accordingly.”

But the success of this vision is not a given. The prevailing, more anxiety-inducing and manipulative narratives that describe technologies destined to become ineluctably more powerful, progressively depriving humans of their prerogatives and responsibilities, are compatible with a system that concentrates the production and management of artificial intelligence in a few giant global companies. “If you peel back the veil of narrative, you find a familiar story of colonization, polarization, monopoly,” says Tenen. “But knowledge is a commons. And intelligence belongs to humanity. It’s a bit like a public library.”

The impact of artificial intelligence on society is difficult to overestimate. But realism must overcome hyperbole. AI is more complex than a parrot. But it is the result of collective, centuries-old, human work. It does not change, deterministically, everything. But today it is an essential dimension of the evolution of humans.