Most of the problems we have today are not because we are creating machines that are intelligent – if it was so I would sleep very soundly – but because the machines we have are not intelligent and yet they are able to do things instead of us, for us, better than us.
Luciano Floridi is a Professor of Philosophy and Information Ethics at the University of Oxford, where he is also Director of the Digital Ethics Lab of the Oxford Internet Institute. His most recent book in Italian, How the infosphere is reshaping human reality, has been translated by Raffaello Cortina Editore and is the winner of the J. Ong Award. At “domusforum. The future of cities” he talks about big data and the future of work linked with Artificial Intelligence.
“I think Winston Churchill was right when he said: 'we shape our buildings and then they shape us'. This applies to any environment including the digital environment. Smart cities, for example, or the IoT, we build them, but then afterwards we put them in place and they start shaping our choices, maybe suggesting something or making us more incline to do something rather than something else," he said.
“Predictive analytics can be used to make better decisions or sometimes trying to anticipate the future. In this last case it can be a great value but its applications can also be very dangerous if you apply it to police, when predicting a terrorist attack for example. A careful handling, both political, social and ethical of these tools will deliver for good and risks are minimised.”
domusforum is a new cultural platform launched by Editoriale Domus to look at the impact of architecture, design and technologies on the urban environment. The first event focussing on the future of the city took place at the Franco Parenti Theatre in Milan on 11 October 2018. Among the speakers were Domus Editor in Chief Michele De Lucchi, Egyptian heritage advisor Fathi Saleh, and advocate for a politically and economically united Africa, Samia Nkrumah.