AI for the People: Immaginari e Politiche dell’Intelligenza Artificiale

On 20 December 2023, a workshop and two talks will take place in Bologna, Italy, to understand, experiment and democratize artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence is suddenly becoming part of our daily lives. The launch of platforms like OpenAI has had an (apparently) disruptive impact on digital innovation trends, regardless of the metaverses Zuckerberg was aiming for.

Big tech corporations (particularly Microsoft and Google) are once again the main players driving these transformations. At the beginning of 2023, Microsoft invested several billion euros (at least ten), also offering OpenAI its physical and Cloud (Azure) infrastructure to implement its performance. In response, Google is challenging OpenAI in terms of performance with its project called Bard. The challenge is open and has crossed Western borders if we also consider the arrival of Ernie Bot promoted by the Chinese Baidu.

This powerful technological innovation is giving rise to profound debates, between those who say for the umpteenth time that this technological leap will lead to the end of work – especially the most “human” of creative functions – and those who contest AI’s independence from work alive – bringing it back to a form of intensification and extension of work – and its structural characteristics – questioning not only whether it is “intelligent”, but whether it is also “artificial”.

Be that as it may, the techno-political function of AI imposes on us the need to develop not only forms of understanding and regulation but also experiments that can test its liberation aspects, the strengthening of autonomous forms of social cooperation, and the opening of new common imaginaries.

More info and the video recordings of the talks are available here.