The present future
A recently published book traces the history of AI and explains its limits as well as its powers
Artificial Intelligence and much more. Also in the past. Understanding what is happening today must—necessarily—pass through an understanding of what has happened before. Because the visionaries of today closely resemble those of yesteryear. Being aware of what has already happened, in other words, is to understand better and for real what is happening now. Barbara Gallavotti has written a book – ‘Il futuro è già qui’ – which is very helpful for navigating these paths.
The book takes its cue from an observation: not a day goes by without the press or television talking about the latest and most amazing advances made due to Artificial Intelligence. AI seems to be robbing us of what we (citizens and businesses) had always done ourselves. The industrial revolution brought about by AI leads, for example, to machines that perform highly complex calculations in seconds, or allows us to benefit from rapid decision-making processes even for complex problems. But the question we need to ask is: what happens when we see this technology as becoming too pervasive and when it appears to take over capabilities that we always thought were exclusively ‘ours’?
To really understand what is happening, Gallavotti traces the history of the visionaries who, over the centuries, have dreamed of creating machines as intelligent as human beings and laid the foundations of today’s AI. But above all, she highlights the profound differences between the way our brains work and how the tools we have invented function. This seems to be the crux of the matter: only by grasping these differences can we explain why Artificial Intelligence outperforms us so easily at certain tasks while others seem destined to remain out of its reach for a long time to come, if not forever. Hence a consideration that Gallavotti explains clearly: the choice about the role new technology plays in our lives is ours alone, as individuals and as a community. Not the other way around. Only in this way could AI herald a new era, that of Natural Intelligence: the era in which we will be able to benefit from what we have invented more than ever before.
Barbara Gallavotti’s book is not the first, nor will it be the last to address the topic of progress and AI in particular, but it is undoubtedly worth reading and re-reading.
Il futuro è già qui
Barbara Gallavotti
Mondadori, 2024
A recently published book traces the history of AI and explains its limits as well as its powers
Artificial Intelligence and much more. Also in the past. Understanding what is happening today must—necessarily—pass through an understanding of what has happened before. Because the visionaries of today closely resemble those of yesteryear. Being aware of what has already happened, in other words, is to understand better and for real what is happening now. Barbara Gallavotti has written a book – ‘Il futuro è già qui’ – which is very helpful for navigating these paths.
The book takes its cue from an observation: not a day goes by without the press or television talking about the latest and most amazing advances made due to Artificial Intelligence. AI seems to be robbing us of what we (citizens and businesses) had always done ourselves. The industrial revolution brought about by AI leads, for example, to machines that perform highly complex calculations in seconds, or allows us to benefit from rapid decision-making processes even for complex problems. But the question we need to ask is: what happens when we see this technology as becoming too pervasive and when it appears to take over capabilities that we always thought were exclusively ‘ours’?
To really understand what is happening, Gallavotti traces the history of the visionaries who, over the centuries, have dreamed of creating machines as intelligent as human beings and laid the foundations of today’s AI. But above all, she highlights the profound differences between the way our brains work and how the tools we have invented function. This seems to be the crux of the matter: only by grasping these differences can we explain why Artificial Intelligence outperforms us so easily at certain tasks while others seem destined to remain out of its reach for a long time to come, if not forever. Hence a consideration that Gallavotti explains clearly: the choice about the role new technology plays in our lives is ours alone, as individuals and as a community. Not the other way around. Only in this way could AI herald a new era, that of Natural Intelligence: the era in which we will be able to benefit from what we have invented more than ever before.
Barbara Gallavotti’s book is not the first, nor will it be the last to address the topic of progress and AI in particular, but it is undoubtedly worth reading and re-reading.
Il futuro è già qui
Barbara Gallavotti
Mondadori, 2024