During the Ai Week, an event on artificial intelligence organized in Milan, we talked to Alec Ross, an analyst of technological policies and adviser to Barack Obama during his presidential mandate. According to Ross, Italy can become the protagonist in the physical age, but must retain talents and overcome the obstacles of regulation.
Interview with Alec Ross
Technological politician analyst
“Do you know where the robots of the Walmart warehouses are made?”. Silence. “In Abruzzo, you didn’t expect it? Nobody expects it, but here, Italy really has a chance in the artificial intelligence market, we have to do something“. Alec Ross, an analyst of technological policies, councilor of Barack Obama and Senior Advisor for Hillary Clinton’s innovation during the presidential mandate, uses the” we “when he talks about Italy and” their “for the United States. He was born and raised in West Virginia, but has Abruzzo origins and teaches at the University of Bologna. As he explained himself in a post on Linkedin:”I don’t see myself in Italy as a tourist. I am here to contribute concretely to create value, help to free the great Italian talents, and ensure that the next 20 years are more prosperous than the last 20. “
For Ross Italy is a country full of talents but must act in a strategic way, “for this reason I speak of artificial physical intelligence. There are four types of artificial intelligence: percentage, agent, generative and physical: theItaly must focus on the last “explained Ross to Fanpage.it. “It is true, the United States have already taken the dominion of the generative head, China the agent. But this is not only artificial intelligence, and Italy must focus on physical”, or artificial intelligence incorporated into physical devices or robots. A classic example of physical ia are i autonomous robots, those used in factories, warehouses, or health. “In Italy there are many virtuous examples in agriculture, for example, in the food sector, logistics, robots, fashion”.
Italy can guide innovation in physics: Alec Ross’s vision
Ross divides artificial intelligence into four macrogruppi. THE’Ia percentagethe systems that use sensors to perceive the real world, such as computer vision, vocal recognition, audio analysis, l‘Ia generativemodels capable of create texts, images, audio, video, code, the agentic iasystems capable of make autonomous decisions and perform homework and ‘Physical ia.
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“I make an example to better understand the physical ia, in the field of agriculture you can use precision systems thanks to the AI sensors, you can Do not waste water with irrigationin case of drought as has already happened in Italy, “explained Ross during the Press conference of the Ai Weekone of the most important events on artificial intelligence, underway in Milan.
So far, explains Ross, Italy, and in general Europe have been like a referee during a football match, “played the United States and China, today we are at the birth of a technological revolution, which is not a bubble, and we must decide whether to put the teams on the field“.
Italy is the problem of digitization
Italy is at the bottom of theDigitization index of the economy and society (Desi)“an inexplicable situation for the potential that this country has”, explains Ross. “Here the first combustion engine was invented, epidemiology, the writing stain, the microscope, glasses, prostheses, radio, parachute, there is something in DNA of Italy which is linked to technological developments “.
There was no game with the US tech giants, as Ross explains, the generative IA is in the hands of the USA, the agentic one at China, Italy must focus on sectors of excellence which already exist and on its talents. “The Italians are everywhere, when I go to California and I enter companies there are entire tables where we only speak in Italian. But just think of universities such as the Polytechnic of Turin, Milan, the University of Bologna or Trento, they are full of young talents who have to keep here“.
Because ACT risks curbing the progress of artificial intelligence
According to Ross, however, it is necessary to find a balance to fill The current gap between the EU and the rest of the world. Especially on the issue of regulation, and in fact, on the stage of the week, it has sThe ACT file of ACT beaten on the ground “376 pages of nonsense,” said Ross. “We still make the same regulation errors, I read every line, And this text is a problem that penalizes not the tech giants but small and medium -sized enterprises. “
AI ACT, explains Ross, “was written by people who belong to the world of jurisprudence, which, however They are technological illiterate. To be concrete, regulating according to the parameters, the size of the parameters is dangerous. I do an example: when you do cancer search for cancer quantity of huge dataa researcher cannot wait for three months for a judgment to go on in his research. So it’s a disaster, “underlines Ross.
“On the one hand you have to Protect privacyOn the other hand, it is necessary to have data, always taking the case of cancer research we must understand if you are young, old, white, black, men or women, to have correct results “. For Ross, a new structure free from rules that risk that they risk slow down the process. “With this regulation for small medium -sized enterprises it is like Make a race with a backpack full of stones“.
