Artificial Intelligence: humans facing the challenge of a new era

In an era that bombards us with data and information, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has entered our lives in a big way, shaping itself as a sort of offshoot of our brain. We are therefore faced with a real technological revolution, a revolution that both fascinates and terrifies us at the same time.

We can, in fact, only imagine all the possibilities that Artificial Intelligence can offer us, making calculation operations, comparison of information and search for solutions almost immediate, which until recently were very complicated to carry out even for the most powerful computers. However, the big question remains: what will remain within the reach of human beings in the technological whirlwind that is now enveloping us? A famous and sinister story told by the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking then resurfaces: «The first robot with artificial intelligence, much superior to human intelligence, is created. He is immediately asked a question: 'Does God exist?'. 'Yes now', he replies, and first of all he destroys the mechanism by which humans could deactivate its functioning."

In short, if the challenges that AI offers us are exciting, there remains strong uncertainty in the face of a crucial question: to what extent can our decisions be governed by a digital tool? In the short essay "Digital Sapiens. Deciding with Artificial Intelligence" (Castelvecchi, 2024, Euro 18.50, pp. 150) Nicola Lattanzi and Andrea Vestrucci answer this question and do so starting from the experience and knowledge accumulated over years of working with AI. Nicola Lattanzi, in fact, teaches Strategy and Management for Complex Systems at the IMT School of Advanced Studies Lucca and deals with the impact of Artificial Intelligence on business models. Andrea Vestrucci teaches AI Ethics and Reasoning Automatic from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bamberg in Germany.

In their essay they first clearly illustrate the benefits and dangers inherent in the interaction between humans and Artificial Intelligence. They remind us first of all how it is right to emphasize the wonders of technologies, but this does not mean we must forget the limits of the technologies themselves. The digital world, for example, is not reality, it does not fully capture its complexity. It is an approximation of reality, a simplification. Artificial Intelligence is also not the human brain. It is not a system that has emotions, manages the unexpected or has creativity, but acts by programming. If this programming is insufficient or includes errors, the AI risks perpetuating the mistake.

Coexisting, cohabiting and deciding with AI is therefore possible, provided we know how it works and exploit its potential. Because what awaits us, Lattanzi and Vestrucci say in the book, is something completely new for us human beings: «We are called to an unprecedented task: that of being guardians of our humanity while we explore the frontiers of the possible in the interaction between human beings and intelligent machine." So, are we ready for the evolutionary leap that AI represents for our species?