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The information emerging from over 4000 interviews carried out on a representative sample of Italian citizens residing in the largest cities of each Region and in the smallest municipalities, under 3000 inhabitants, tells us that 62% of Italians believe that AI will be able to bring “benefits to the economy”, but when we move from the general dimension to issues that affect individual people more closely, such as work for example, the trend is reversed: as many as 64% of them confess that they believe that AI will destroy jobs, thus having a negative impact on individuals. A trend that is accentuated compared to last year: in 2023, in fact, again based on the findings carried out by the Foundation’s Observatory, those who thought that AI would have positive impacts on the economy were 71%: a good 9% more of this year. And the same is observed for those who are sure that AI will have a negative impact on the environment, with emissions that will not be compensated by the benefits deriving from its implementation (61% of those interviewed), or even for those who see it as a danger for democracy (68% of the total).
A darkly colored representation, perhaps the result of a veiled psychological terrorism that characterizes a narrative that is too often demonizing, characterized by “robots that will take over”. Also because, in practice, regular users of generative AI tools – just to mention the most widespread and discussed one today – according to the Observatory’s findings, are only 8% of the total, with a range that goes from 11% of those who live in large cities to a paltry 4% of residents in municipalities under 3000 inhabitants.
In short: we fear it but we don’t know it. And if you fear what you don’t know, usually, you fear it because you don’t know it. On the other hand, the real problem we have to deal with is precisely the lack of knowledge of AI, with the opportunities and threats that it inevitably brings with it. Intoxicated by endless conversations about unlikely risks deriving from the imminent advent of an equally unlikely general AI (it would be different if we were talking – more correctly – about strong AI), we end up misplacing both the risks and the opportunities underlying what is a technology so revolutionary as to profoundly redefine social and economic scenarios. Today more than ever, politicians, entrepreneurs and citizens must understand the impacts of AI on their lives and on our future: looking at the present with a perspective on the future means, by definition, thinking about sustainability. The real issue, therefore, is understanding how AI can become a tool for sustainable development in the broader framework of digital sustainability.
The problem is not to ask which jobs will disappear, but how all jobs and the very concept of work will change (and the reference to SDG8 is immediate). The problem, in the week of Earth Day, is not to ask whether training AI has a strong or weak environmental impact, but whether their application will compensate for this impact (and we are talking about SDG 7 and SDG13). Yes: AI is a revolution. But if the impacts of economic, social and environmental sustainability are not seriously considered, the risk will be that the heads that will roll as a result of this revolution will be ours.
* President of the Foundation for Digital Sustainability
