Risorgimento Museum, a manifesto for AI
Director Bollo: 'Cultural institutes have the task of training and stimulating critical thinking to be applied to the complexity of the present'
Key points
There is a moment when artificial intelligence stops being future and becomes ordinary practice: a caption generated faster, an archive better interrogated, a visit rethought for different degrees of accessibility. This is how technology really enters a cultural facility like a museum. Not as an ornament. The National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento tackles this transition with a Manifesto for the conscious use of artificial intelligence, the first ethical document dedicated to AI adopted by a museum in Italia.
Culture is verification, interpretation, choice
The Manifesto, which was created in collaboration with Sineglossa and the National School of Cultural Heritage and Activities, is not a defensive regulation, nor a celebration of innovation, but rather an orientation map, nine points to say that AI can find a home in museums without replacing judgement, competence and responsibility.
Artificial intelligence is referred to as support for research, design, communication, data management and content writing, never as a proxy. In a time when automation promises efficiency, the museum reminds us that culture is verification, interpretation, choice. According to Alessandro Bollo, the museum's director, 'after Covid-19, a widespread awareness of the importance of digital technologies in producing greater impact and increasing social and cultural relevance has emerged among professionals'.
But this awareness has often remained unfulfilled, the use of technologies has been passive and reactive, without a real ability to focus on their potential and limits. The decisive point is not the acquisition of tools, but the building of skills. It is not enough to use AI, it is necessary to know how to interrogate it, to understand how models work, what data they mobilise, what bias they can reproduce and what responsibilities they activate.
Bollo: "Stimulating critical thinking"
After all, Bollo recalls, "cultural institutions have as their mandate to train and stimulate critical thinking to be applied to the complexity of the present". The AI literacy thus becomes institutional literacy. Bollo observes that contradictory attitudes coexist in museums today, with some embarking on experimentation 'with curiosity and impetus, sometimes instinctively and not always thoughtfully enough. It has already happened with Second Life, metaverse, Nft... sudden enthusiasms, followed by rapid disillusionment
