Why data management is a key factor for companies

Ithe future was yesterday. The US is racing, China is on another planet. And while Europe debates rules, the time for taking the lead on artificial intelligence is now over.

At the conclusion of the AI Transition 2024 event, the two-day discussion in Milan organised by Sole24Ore, for Giuliano Noci of the Politecnico di Milano, the time has come for Italy too to take the path of innovation with force: 'There are too many elements that deter Europe from achieving this goal, ideological rigidity and excessive bureaucracy in the head. But not only that, we have to be honest, our manufacturing has not yet put the issue of data processing on the agenda. A big discontinuity is needed here. And finally, we must clear the field of the fact that this technology replaces physical jobs. This is not the case,' concluded Noci, 'especially in a country like ours that is in a demographic crisis and could see a drop in GDP in the coming years due to a lack of workers. A call to arms for public administration and private companies that seem culturally restrained from embarking on the path of using data in a more consistent manner.

To do this, it is clear that, in addition to a cultural choice, we need infrastructures that can also serve companies that would not be able to provide important answers on their own. The most significant experience in Italy is certainly the Leonardo supercomputer of Cineca in Bologna. Director General Alessandra Poggiani explains how, despite being founded in 1969, 'the centre is now an enabling factor for artificial intelligence and its industrial applications worldwide. The problem, however, is that Cineca is not currently dedicated to private companies. It performs a public service and is paid for by taxpayers, so although it has projects with companies, by its very statute it does not serve technology transfer as its first mission, but research. This is also why the European Union is thinking about issuing new rules and creating new infrastructures that can have private companies as their first interface'. Despite the fact that the Leonardo system has major plans to expand from the current ten megawatts to 15 in the near future, Poggiani also questions the issues of social responsibility such as 'return on investment, possible contamination with companies and, finally, that of skills. As it is not true what you hear people saying that only engineers or technicians in scientific subjects are needed at the moment. We need a cross-fertilisation of cultural, humanistic and linguistic skills because calculation models also need people who study and interpret human behaviour'.

Emphasising that the decline in employment as a result of the use of artificial intelligence is a false problem, Marco Bentivogli also spoke in conversation with RAI journalist Barbara Carfagna. 'First of all, it is good to remember that we have to imagine this new technology in the same way as electricity once was. In itself it is part of the natural way of running a business, but in a neutral way. It is not that electricity independently increases or decreases productivity. Rather, there is a theme of transformation of many jobs. "Processes of integration, replacement and in some cases disappearance of many professions will be inevitable. However, we are far from the Chinese paradox that for certain positions, candidates who already possess their twin in artificial intelligence are rewarded and thus appear as two parallel workers for the cost of one'.

Bentivogli pointed out that according to some research, the possibility of this technology impacting on high cognitive occupations is higher than on the more manual and sensory occupations for which there will continue to be an important market. Finally, 'as a former trade unionist, I can say that since the 1970s, good workers' representatives knew all about the technologies of the time, the assembly line and the production cycle. So that won't change, trade unionists in the future will be asked to know the processes in depth, including data management'.