2020 (EN)

The Fondazione Mediterraneo and the Federazione Anna Lindh Italia participated in the event "THE GOOD ALGORITHM? ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: ETHICS, LAW, HEALTH "organized in Rome by the Pontifical Academia Pro Vita (Pav).
"A sort of" Paris of technology "which, similarly to that on the climate, brings together computer engineers, with experts on ethics and moral philosophy on the themes of artificial intelligence (Ai)", thus Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia - president of Pav - has defined the double appointment: the general assembly and the related workshop on «The“ good ”algorithm? Ai: ethics, law, health ", which took place in the Vatican from Wednesday 26 to Thursday 27, and to follow the day of Friday 28 at the Auditorium in via della Conciliazione with the signing of the" call "for ethical artificial intelligence.
In the new Synod Hall, the meeting was divided into two phases: the initial day was reserved for academics, the second open to world-renowned scholars; over a thousand people participated instead on the day of the 28th when there was the signature of a call presented to Pope Francis.
Archbishop Paglia stressed that there is "a need for a strong moral ambition to humanize the technique and not technologize the human".
After all, continued the president of the Pav, "the intent is to create a movement involving public institutions, NGOs, industries to produce a direction in the development and use of technologies derived from AI". Therefore, he pointed out, "the first signing of this call is not a point of arrival, but a beginning for a commitment that appears urgent".
Previously, Monsignor Paglia had revealed how it came to the choice of the theme: "He asked to see me - he revealed - the new president of Microsoft, Brad Smith. In summary he tells me: "we have a wealth of enormous potential for progress and equally terrible prospects for irreversibly polluting the human being. We are aware of this enormous responsibility. Among us there are only engineers and almost no expert in ethics, in moral philosophy. We would like to ask you, while maintaining full freedom and total autonomy, to accompany us as interlocutors in our work. We do not need any conference, but to have you as travel companions, to always place human dignity at the center "". Similar requests, he continued, then came "from the president of IBM, Google, Huawei and others". Also because, he concluded, especially in the face of the predictive power of machines, the Pav "feels called to investigate the specific impact of technologies on the medical and health world and on the care and protection of life. Human activity in these sectors appears increasingly broken down into multiple elements that are not easily attributable to the control or will of individuals. This new modality particularly challenges the medical and health professions which have as their object fundamental values ​​such as those connected with corporeality and human life ».
The president Michele Capasso, present at the event, underlined the need for specific training in AI, necessarily interdisciplinary and continuous, that accompanies the professional throughout his career and is able to constantly follow global changes, very managed often from an anarchist and undemocratic globalization
.