Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future: a Workshop by Impactscool

On Saturday, February 24, the Institute for Entrepreneurship hosted a discussion on “Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future” presented by Impactscool. Impactscool offers education on innovation, new technologies, and the future ahead of us. It operates through debates, conferences, and workshops for students and agencies. In 2017 Impactscool hosted 100 workshops in 3 countries for 3700 participants.

Impactscool presentation on Artificial Intelligence

Impactscool presentation on Artificial Intelligence

The first speaker – Mattia Crespi (Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, CA), stated that we are entering the world of digital dominance. He talked about the possibility to animate objects and environments, manipulate matter, encode human activity, and alter human perception, as well as how the “Internet of actions” will be responsible for reconfiguring reality.

Speakers Christina Pozzi (author of 2050: Guida (fu)turistica per viaggiatori nel tempo and co-founder of Impactscool), Andrea Geremicca (co-founder and CMO of Impactscool), and Cosimo Accoto (author of Il Mondo Dato, research affiliate MIT) carried on to discuss how Impactscool can help inform and prepare people for a technologically advanced future. They asked the audience to share their vision of the world in 30 years and later presented on robotics projects already in existence.

Professor Silvia Pulino, Director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship noted that robots are likely to replace 800 million jobs by 2030. She also expressed her concern for the current situation in Italy, with one in three Italians under 25 unemployed and traditional education struggling to catch up with technology development and innovation. She underlined the importance of initiative and entrepreneurship for young adults to be competitive in today’s world.

The discussion was followed by the Italian premiere of AlphaGo – a Netflix documentary which brings Artificial Intelligence and Go, the world’s oldest strategy board game, together in a tournament battle in South Korea between humans and technology. The audience discussed the film and proposed different theories on how technology will intervene in everyday life in the future.

Paolo Benanti, from the Pontifica Università Gregoriana, concluded the discussion by analyzing the ethical governance of A.I. and moral questions that rise along with the development of technology. He noted that it is important to keep in mind the ethical side of the question before taking the next steps in IT-progress.