Staying human

Creativity and fantasy, ideas, time and space for imagination. These are the faculties we all have, which give us health and wellbeing, unlike performing secondary, repetitive tasks. Indeed, the latter, after an initial phase of high performance, leave us alienated and drained of energy. Every profession depends on human creativity, while we continue to destroy and anaesthetise our souls carrying out routine tasks. 

Artificial Intelligence is here to help and, first of all, free up our time so we can deal with our emotions, which lead us impetuously towards our best faculties: imagination and creation, leaving the task of "large-scale analysis" to AI. Anna Tampieri, Director of Research for CNR, tells us about this. "It is unlikely that the inventive, intuitive capacities of humans can be replaced by a machine for the creation of an idea that generates an invention, but combining artificial intelligence with the potential of the human mind can certainly make the innovation much more perfectible, and transform it more quickly into a product, thanks to AI's ability to analyse and process large quantities of data".

What better opportunity, then, to free ourselves from inconvenient, repetitive tasks, to be done with an extremely high level of precision, instead focusing on what allows us to "stay human"?
However, technology is frightening, because it forces change and adaptation that we are never ready for. The effects of artificial intelligence are very clear to us all, both good and bad. Throughout the history of human evolution, technology has always been the tool with which our species has tried to meet our needs and demands. Today, it requires us to take a step further: staying connected to the values and intentions at the root of our inventions. Thinking of the future as a promise, and not as a threat.

The goal of this issue of INNESTI is to continue to reflect on intention as the driver of Artificial Intelligence at the service of our species, and remember the importance of using critical thought in our everyday choices, including our choices regarding food, which are among the most frequent and fundamental. This represents the great power of individual participation for change. The central role of artificial intelligence paradoxically returns we humans to the centre, calling us to imagine a future where we are the protagonists, and where progress is in service of people's happiness.