Challenges and Opportunities of AI debated on the T4EU Podcast

The Transform4Europe Alliance has just launched the second episode of the Outreach podcast which examines the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence for society. Guests Francesco Miele and William Hasselberger discuss the origins of AI, its impact on employment and the ethics behind the innovation.

“One of the most philosophically interesting features of AI is that debates about AI end up being debates, at the same time, about human beings”, begins William Hasselberger, Director of the Digital Ethics Lab and Associate Professor at the Institute for Political Studies at Universidade Católica Portuguesa.

The expert mentions how AI was created to mimic and perform tasks, but also to ‘reproduce the broad flexible kind of intelligence that a human adult has’. According to Hasselberger, for a machine to be intelligent in the same way a human is intelligent ‘is unsettling’. Hence the ongoing concern around the ethics of AI.

Francesco Miele, assistant professor at the department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Trieste, reminds us AI is not a new concept, ‘it has been around since the 1950s’. The specialist talks about various issues brought on by AI, such as automation, unemployment, social risks and the exacerbation of existing inequalities.

With moderation by Elisabetta de Giorgi, associate professor at the department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Trieste, this episode dives into the challenges and benefits of AI for society. Listen to the podcast here: