What is the situation in Italy with respect to the impact of ICT (communication and information technologies) on the population?
Opportunities and critical issues related to the use of ICT have certainly emerged during the pandemic period. According to Istat, in 2022 there was a significant percentage increase in the number of people (aged six and up) who surfed online, compared to the observations of previous years, so there was also a large growth in online sales. line. Obviously it is easy to trace this acceleration to the period of isolation. However, again according to Istat, in 2021 just under half of the population residing in Italy has at least basic digital skills, with a rather large gap compared to various European countries.
If it is true that the habitual use of technologies helps to gain trust, it is essential to work on awareness of how these technologies work and the risks they may entail.
In your research group, social informatics and technology assessment, you have conducted some studies on the digitization process forced by pandemic events. What emerged?
Analyzing the massive use that schools and universities have had to make of ICT, we have seen how, on the one hand, this has accelerated the diffusion in the use of digital technologies, but on the other it has highlighted the weaknesses. These concerned not only the lack of connection in many areas and the lack of devices available in the student and teacher community, accentuated by the different economic conditions. Above all, the need for innovative pedagogical models has emerged, capable of involving the class even from a distance. What subsequent experiences have shown us is that school teaching is difficult to replace by the online method, because human contact remains central, but the tools can be complementary and support learning and involvement.
A topic that is being talked about more and more frequently is the use of artificial intelligence (AI)…
Yes, the use of AI is daily and widespread, let's think of tools such as voice assistants, which help us to schedule and organize our activities, or of the uses of AI in medicine in the diagnosis phase but also in research on therapies , which can become increasingly personalized. This is a field in which research and pharmaceutical companies themselves are investing heavily and in which people have a certain amount of trust.
There are also uses related to safety, both in the environmental sector, where artificial intelligence can help predict and prevent catastrophic events, but also understood in terms of safety and social control.
For example?
Camera systems connected to AI tools allow pervasive control of public spaces, such as airports, allowing for the rapid identification of potentially risky behaviour. This also happens with some security systems in private environments, often used to monitor lonely elderly people, for example; these are systems that warn if they intercept a dangerous situation.
What are the implications of this type of use?
Of course, these jobs pose non-trivial ethical and privacy issues, about being constantly monitored and about the use of this information.
How do you evaluate the public debate on these issues?
In the scientific community, attention to these aspects is very strong, while it doesn't seem to me to be the same in people (general public). Let's take as an example tools the alarms that are installed in the house against theft. The more remotely controllable they are, the more possible an intrusion is. Having this awareness would be important, not to not use these tools, but to decide how best to do it. It is a bit like the discussion that is done with social networks. Those who use them are not always aware of being in a public "place" and this also emerges from the many cases of aggressive phenomena that take place online. Education on the use of these tools is really important.
Let's go back to what you said before, to the fact that Italy is one of the last countries for digital skills, which means knowledge of technologies but also knowledge of risks. Who do you think is responsible for providing this training?
School and university certainly play a very important role. And this not only if we think of the new generations. We have already observed in many experiences that sending a message to a child means educating the whole family. Also national programs promoting specific actions to be carried out also with the support of voluntary associations and other actors. they are important, as they have been, for example, in disseminating tools to combat bullying. All these technologies have enormous potential if used well. To use them well, it is necessary to work in a capillary manner to disseminate knowledge of both the technologies and their positive and negative impacts.
What phenomena allows us to understand the study of the behavior of the online population?
Almost all social behaviors are reflected online, many studies concern, for example, the phenomena of gender-based violence, cyberbullying, etc. The Big Companies understood this first and began to profile us to predict and perhaps even induce needs and, therefore, organize their business plan in the best possible way. Eventually it's something they figured out and started doing in politics as well. So let's go back to awareness...
What are the public/private balances in this sense?
An interesting aspect is the use that large private companies have made or can make of ideas and inputs that come from online communities, and which they can take, engineer and resell. A particular case is that of open software, which is made available in an open manner and whose codes are available and modifiable with the constraint that they must always be re-proposed to the public in an open manner. There's always the risk that this won't happen, even if the availability of open tools is now more and more widespread. There is also a theme of economic sustainability. While those working in the public sector may be able to embrace this model, it may be more difficult for small companies that are unlikely to use completely open strategies, unless they are fully integrated into a European design flow that requires this approach to be adopted.
On the other hand, this approach is really changing the world of research, favoring a much wider circulation of tools and ideas.
Curated by Monia Torre
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