“A heretical point of view on artificial intelligence” the Spoke 5 talk at the inaugural day of the RAISE Village

On the inaugural day of the RAISE Village on October 26th Annalisa Barla and Alessandro Verri of Spoke 5 (UniGe) presented their talk “A heretical point of view on artificial intelligence” on the issues of ethics in the field of artificial intelligence.

During the talk the researchers offered the public a critical reflection on AI, questioning some of the most widespread ideas about this technology, starting from the first systems based on exact rules up to modern models that learn from experience. The journey highlights the often overlooked limitations of AI: many models reveal correlations without explaining causality, and the accuracy of the results depends heavily on the availability of large amounts of data.

A particular focus was dedicated to the use of AI in medicine, where expectations must be confronted with practical complexities. The objective is to offer a more aware look at AI, understood not only as a technology, but as a phenomenon with ethical and practical implications of great importance.

“In this historical moment everyone is interested in the discussion on artificial intelligence. There is great excitement and from my point of view it is very interesting because I have been dealing with it for many years but I have only recently been able to talk about it in public.
There are also strong preconceptions, in the sense that users have beliefs about how this thing works. In my opinion, however, it is very nice to try to explain how these things really work because it is possible to change preconceptions a little and perhaps to open up interest in this topic even more. I am very happy!” comments Annalisa Barla, associate professor of the Department of computer science, bioengineering, robotics and systems engineering at the University of Genoa.

“It was an opportunity to show the amazing feats of artificial intelligence in everyday life. There are some aspects, not so much danger, but let’s say, pitfalls of this technology that are not always talked about. Perhaps because those who develop this technology focus on the aspects that have a market. Some things that we tried to discuss together this evening denote the intrinsic limits of these technologies which are unavoidable due to how they are built and how they work. We can hardly imagine that they can be done in a different way from how they are done now” added Alessandro Verri Vice Department Director Department of computer science, bioengineering, robotics and systems engineering at the University of Genoa.