Think Digital, Act Sustainable

IN ORDER TO AVOID A FUTURE SIMILAR TO '1984', WE MUST NOT STOP TECHNOLOGY, BUT GIVE IT RULES. ALSO BECAUSE TECHNOLOGY, AND IN PARTICULAR ITS MOST ADVANCED ASPECT REPRESENTED BY AI, IS FUNDAMENTAL TO TAKE THE ROAD OF ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY, EXPLAINS RECTOR GIANMARIO VERONA IN THE EDITORIAL THAT OPENS THE NOVEMBER ISSUE OF THE BOCCONI MAGAZINE

by Gianmario Verona, Rector

The 1984 described in the novel of the same name by George Orwell could arrive in 2024. To say this, last May, was Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, who will inaugurate Bocconi's 120th academic year on December 2. Referring to Artificial Intelligence, he said that "if we don't put in place laws that will protect people in the future, we will find that technology is moving forward and it will be very difficult to catch up." Smith, a lawyer, at the company founded by Bill Gates, and led today by Satya Nadella, has responsibility for a team of 1,500 business, legal and corporate affairs professionals located in 54 countries and operating in more than 120 countries, and focuses on key issues straddling technology and society such as cybersecurity, privacy, Artificial Intelligence, environmental sustainability, human rights, immigration and philanthropy. 
 
In the digital century, where ESG issues seem to be finally becoming a priority and not just a passing fad, questioning the ethical limits of technology so as to guide it to help us protect humans, society and the environment in which we live, should be a mantra for everyone: managers, scientists, policy makers, teachers. 
 
It is wrong, however, to think, and of course Smith does not make this mistake, that technology should be stopped. Technology, and with it its most advanced frontier today represented by Artificial Intelligence, must be developed to meet our needs, which are increasingly growing and solutions to them must be sustainable in a world that today is not so from the environmental and inequality points of view. On the rise is not only the temperature of the Earth because of CO2 emissions that we are not able to reduce, but also the gap between rich and poor, north and south of the world. Artificial Intelligence, using the enormous amount of data that the digital century has made available to us, must help us act in a sustainable way. To do this, we need to focus on multidisciplinary skills that are slowly making their way into the Italian education system and to attain a shared goal in a world that, as Prime Minister Mario Draghi has said, needs multilateral guidance.