Marveling at the time of Artificial Intelligence

An article by Francesco Berlucchi

From Vandenberg Space Base , California, on June 12, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried the first space mission in the history of the Church into orbit. The cubesat, a miniaturized satellite the size of a shoebox, was built by the students of the Polytechnic University of Turin and operated by the Italian Space Agency with the mission of bringing into space the nanobook, made by the CNR, with the words spoken by Pope Francis on March 27, 2020 during the Statio Orbis, and the reflections that arose from it. That unforgettable moment, in which in the parvis of St. Peter's Basilica the Pope stopped time and space, suspended in the anguish of the pandemic, became a book. The volume was stored at the Global Seed Repository, in the Svalbard Islands, as a seed of hope for all humanity, and then changed format again until it became a nanobook, sent into space in a sun-synchronous orbit to cross the sky around the world as the sun rose.

"Technology must be an engine of hope for all humanity," explains Fr. Luca Peyron, director of the University Pastoral Care of Turin, coordinator of the Service for the Digital Apostolate and professor of Theology at Università Cattolica, during the meeting "Marveling at the time of Artificial Intelligence: emotions and technology" in the first edition of Soul - Festival of Spirituality  promoted by the University and the Archdiocese of Milan. To give shape to his words, Peyron chooses the "Spei Satelles" project. "This satellite was built by people in their twenties, together with their professors and experienced professionals. The key to the future, to continue to be amazed, is intergenerationality," continues the coordinator of the Digital Apostolate Service. "If we analogues are able to transmit the passion for life to those who were born digital, the digital world will be a world capable of continuing to preserve life. We're all in the same boat, on the same planet, on the same spaceship."

"Wonder is an epistemic emotion because it generates knowledge, it activates in us the desire to expand our boundaries," says Giuseppe Riva, professor of General Psychology and Communication Psychology and director of HTLab, the laboratory at Università Cattolica that investigates the relationship between human experience and technology. "Wonder has two very different faces, in Italian they are rendered by the same word but the Americans use the term wonder, the positive wonder that gives rise to the desire to emulate, and awe, that wonder that generates amazement but also fear. Here, Artificial Intelligence generates awe, because we don't understand it."

In the Sala Buzzati of the Corriere della Sera Foundation, during the dialogue moderated by Massimo Sideri, columnist for the Milanese newspaper, Riva explains that "ChatGPT is not surprising, because wonder is born from surprise while ChatGPT uses probability, what it tells us is predictable." The answers he gives us are not random, but "the result of the prediction that technology makes", and will be "all the more precise the wider the access to the database". On the contrary, wonder plays a central role in our existence because "it allows us to get out of everyday life," Riva continues. "Each of us tends to stay in our comfort zone because it gives us security. We go for coffee in a certain café because we know that we will like the coffee there. We do things that we can predict. The problem is that by dint of not taking risks, and not wanting to go beyond the comfort zone, we don't grow. Going beyond the comfort zone comes at a cost, and it is wonder that gives us the strength to bear this cost. In human history, it has always been one of the elements that has allowed culture to evolve, and people to face challenges that at first seemed impossible."  

"My grandson is eleven years old, and like all children, he plays video games," says Peyron. "Unfortunately, he supports Juventus, and he always chose Cristiano Ronaldo (smiles, ed.). I dream of a video game in which at some point Ronaldo stops, turns around and says: "Nico, enough is enough, go play in the yard, see you in five hours". Imagination comes from our wounds and the caresses we are given, from the desire to be meaningful to someone. If we don't educate ourselves to the idea that being meaningful is very different from being performing, we reduce the human being to a machine, to a number, to a statistic." Here it is, the secret to continuing to marvel in the age of Artificial Intelligence. It's in the alliance between human and machine.

The interview is published on Secondo Tempo.