“We have to make sure we do not retreat in technological progress and at the same time create a temporal expansion that allows us to rethink and renew our practices in depth, together with the supporting social, institutional and legal structures. Technological innovation without thinking innovation will not take us far. The efficacy of thought in fact requires depth, so it is necessary to create a dilation for reflection in this incessant acceleration ”.
In the vision outlined a Republic gives Simona Tiribelli, director for Ethics, AI, & Global Health at the Institute for Technology & Global Health in Boston, a distinctive contrast of the digital experience lived during the pandemic is condensed: if on the one hand the economic-health emergency has shown the many opportunities offered by the digital revolution, on the other hand there was not even time to reflect on the impact of the revolution itself.
In addition to leading the policy, research and innovation laboratory on new technological frontiers for the promotion and protection of global health in Boston, born from the spin-off of the Mit PathCheck Foundation, the researcher born in 1993 is working at the University of Macerata in the field of moral philosophy and ethics applied to artificial intelligence.
Winner in 2019 of one of the prestigious Fulbright scholarships, visiting fellow at the Mit Media Lab in 2021 and co-founder as well as vice president of the Fatti di Algos community, Tiribelli has dealt with relationship between man and technology, and in particular of the ethical implications of this link. From this point of view, the pandemic has undoubtedly represented an area extremely rich in ideas for analysis and reflection, especially in the future.
Digital innovation is impacting above all on people’s professional lives, enabling hybrid and innovative models. Yet, in the collective imagination, a perception of threat rather than opportunity prevails. Is shifting the balance just a matter of trust? What does it mean to build trust in digital innovation?
“Although it is not the only one, trust is certainly a crucial enabling condition for digital innovation, especially in terms of the adoption and effective use of digital technologies. The higher the level of use or the intention to use digital technologies. in fundamental personal and social areas, from work to health, and the greater the degree of trust required of citizens for such employment to be truly effective and sustainable also in terms of cost-benefits. In the idea of sustainable digital innovation in an ethical sense, that is an innovation that respects and promotes the well-being of humans and the environment, trust can neither be built at a table nor induced. An “artificial trust” is in fact emptied of its components and is short-lived “.
If it cannot be built or induced, then where does trust come from? And above all, what are the elements that give it shape and substance?
“Trust has both a rational and an irrational component. I trust something or predominantly someone often when I know that something or someone who has previously shown a certain margin of guarantee in terms of evidence of good behavior or functioning. To generate trust it is therefore necessary to work on an epistemological dimension: generating trust means both generating knowledge in terms of empirical evidence that what I am applying in that particular sector is effective, and knowledge as awareness, which means knowing both the opportunities and the risks of what I am using and, at the same time, on how to allocate responsibility for each of them “.
Are knowledge and awareness sufficient or do you need something else?
“We must always remember that trust also has an irrational component: for example when I place or do not trust something or someone hoping that things will not go wrong. This means that to generate trust it is necessary not to neglect or excessively trigger the emotional dimension or If we take innovation, the narrative of technology tends to make fear and alarmism its own logic, but in doing so we capture attention without informing, targeting the so-called primary emotions, such as fear, interest, curiosity. Some of these can be preparatory to opening up to a serious dialogue on the risks and benefits of digital innovation, but if instead of just opening they also close the circle of the debate, empty it and reduce it to mere rhetoric, to a quick thought , lacking depth and criticality. Here the ethics of digital communication plays a crucial role in the self-generation of trust in the public sphere. lica and should become part of teaching at every level. “
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Untangling digital innovation, however, is not child’s play, especially for the layman.
“The generation of trust in digital innovation is undoubtedly a complex and multidimensional work. The ethics of new technologies and artificial intelligence commits its reflection precisely to making this complexity more intelligible and deconstructing, working to identify, anticipate and address the problematic issues and risks that technological innovation raises at the individual, relational, institutional, social level “.
Beyond our personal efforts, must we expect technological development to consider these side effects upstream, trying to minimize them if not eliminate them? Can there really be an ethics of innovation, technologies and by-design algorithms?
“Certainly, and I believe that claim is the right noun. Today we must expect that there is an ethics by design approach extended both at the institutional design level, which constitutes an ex post examination of which technologies it is good to adopt or not, especially in contexts sensitive, both on a private level, especially in the development of particular technologies such as those based on algorithms. The ex ante ethical analysis should be essential in all processes of design and technological development. utopian idea, because we do not have a predictive and all-encompassing knowledge of all the potential accidental and intentional risks that the design, implementation and use of technologies can raise. The task of the ethics of digital technologies and artificial intelligence is rather, to provide the tools to identify and prevent them. And, where this is not possible, to mitigate them in order to maximize the benefits ici of technological innovation in support of humans and the environment. Only a digital innovation that incorporates ethics by design can be defined as intrinsically sustainable “.
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Does the fact that the digital transformation stimulated and induced by the pandemic is the daughter of an emergency context, and not a natural context, represent an advantage or a disadvantage in the future?
“Both. The upside is that the pandemic has amply shown that digital technologies, which we thought of as an optional tool, have the potential to work as the only way to do something. That digital transformation had reshaped how we do certain practices or access to certain services was already well known. Less well known was the thought and the possibility of relating to this new way as the only way. The pandemic has reconfirmed the potential of technologies to offer us alternative spaces, ways and times to do things , very often highly functional. The disadvantage is the acceleration dimension connoting the current epidemiological emergency: when we talk about practices and activities we turn to the human dimension, and the human part, unlike the technological one, was not prepared to rethink deeply their own practices. Thus, we have witnessed a paradigmatic phenomenon: new apps or digital services radically increase their data processing skills and information support and, at the same time, a tiring and forced readjustment of human practices by now consolidated to new space-time contexts “.
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Can we hope for a realignment of these balances or should we resign ourselves to a certain degree of imbalance?
“Not only can we hope, but we must act and do it in an orderly manner. In the hoped-for exit from the emergency context, we must ensure that we do not retreat in technological progress, but at the same time create a time extension that allows us to rethink and renew our practices in depth , together with the supporting social, institutional and legal structures. We must ensure that this change is not inevitably forced or guided once again by the pace of technological development, but that it is reoriented and rethought starting from deep reflection and innovation , first of all, of thought. The efficacy of thought in fact requires depth, so it is necessary to create an expansion for reflection in this incessant acceleration “.
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