La diffusione delle nuove tecnologie informatiche trasforma in modo dirompente la nostra vita individuale e collettiva. Cambia il campo della politica, dalle tecniche di costruzione del consenso alle modalità di gestione del policy making.
Call for Paper
Digital Twins
Tra le frontiere più avanzate della innovazione digitale, i Digital Twins (“gemelli digitali”) investono i modelli e i sistemi di gestione e interazione con la realtà sociale e politica che ci circonda. Questa tecnologia emergente non si limita a rappresentare entità materiali, che siano costruite o naturali, ma si estende anche a processi, organizzazioni e persone, riproducendo dinamicamente tutte le caratteristiche dell’entità rappresentata attraverso l’aggiornamento costante dei dati in tempo reale.
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Digital Twins
One of the most advanced frontiers in Digital Innovation, “Digital twins” affect models and systems for managing, and interacting with, the social and political reality around us. This emerging technology is not limited to representing material entities, whether built or natural, but also extends to processes, organizations, and even people, dynamically reproducing all the characteristics of the represented entity by constantly updating data in real time.
Oltre ai focus indicati, per tutte le call for paper verranno prese in considerazione submission (saggi o web reviews) sui diversi temi della digital politics.
Digicracy
3/2023
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- Mauro Calise, Fortunato Musella, Digicrazia. Istruzioni per l’uso
- Maurizio Ferraris, Il pericolo. Digicrazia e Intelligenza artificiale
- Mario Cosenza, Gianluca Giannini, Antonio Pescapé, L’Ia tra tecnologia e filosofia
- Domenico Talia, Il potere regolamentare della governamentalità digitale
- Nicola Palladino, A digital constitutionalism framework for Ai
- Francesco Amato, Biagio Aragona, Mattia De Angelis, Factors and possible application scenarios of Explainable Ai
- Vittorio Iervese, Nicola Riccardi,Politics as a rigged game.Ai generated PRP during the last Spanish election
- Daniela Piana, People life cycle in the compass of digital cities. Building capacities to act in the digital society as a cross-generational and intertemporal strategy
- Claudia Favarato, Digital post-humanism: Onto-relational basis for political theory 4.0
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DIGICRACY – A USER GUIDE
Mauro Calise, Fortunato Musella
DIGICRACY – A USER GUIDE
This article introduces «Digicracy» – an emerging governance model driven by digital technologies and Ai – presenting it as the cutting edge of digital politics transformation. The presentation consists of the comparison of the definitions of Digicracy provided by three generative Ai models. Key characteristics like algorithmic governance, data-driven decision-making, digital participation, and process automation are examined. Potential benefits of efficiency, transparency, and accountability are weighed against ethical concerns around Ai systems’ transparency, data privacy, and bias. Risks of autonomous Ai-enabled weapons are addressed, advocating regulations ensuring human control. Strategies for States to regulate big tech’s financial and technological power, such as antitrust laws and international cooperation, are explored. A call for public discourse and ethical frameworks to responsibly govern these disruptive technologies concludes the piece.
KEYWORDS: Digicracy, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Politics, Algorithmic Governance, Autonomous Weapons Systems, Big Tech Regulation.
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THE DANGER. DIGICRACY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Maurizio Ferraris
THE DANGER. DIGICRACY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Exploring the exaggerated apprehensions about Artificial Intelligence (Ai) and digital democracy, this essay contrasts these with the indifference towards real threats posed by unregulated technological acceleration. The investigation reveals a significant discrepancy between the fears often associated with Ai and the actual, more pressing dangers overlooked in the current debate. By scrutinizing unfounded fears and delineating the «worst scenario» that Ai might indeed pose, a new analytical framework is proposed to address and possibly mitigate these threats. This analysis emphasizes the urgent need to focus on the political implications of Ai to safeguard democracy and human autonomy, highlighting the importance of oversight in the technological domain.
KEYWORDS: Artificial Intelligence, Digital Democracy, Technological Threats, Oversight, Human Autonomy
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AI BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY
Mario Cosenza, Gianluca Giannini, Antonio Pescapè
AI BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY
By bringing together technological and philosophical perspectives, this paper seeks to highlight some critical faults in the narrative surrounding recent developments in Ai. Without in any way denying the inevitable specificities of the exquisitely technical debate around the implementation of such technologies, it is still possible try to expand the explanatory framework that the specialist discussion can be part of. In particular, the philosophical, political and social aspects – production chains, effects on democratic inclusion, the «mechanics» of the relationship between private and public policy, responsibility – do not always emerge clearly in technical reconstructions: instead, the article proposes to show that it is precisely as Ai increasingly assumes the force of a total social fact – i.e. potentially including every aspect of associated life – that the humanistic intellectual contribution comes powerfully back onto the scene. A holistic approach to the issue must be attempted, one that covers every aspect of the discussion and thus become an attempt at clarification and a democratic contribution. Nothing is precluded from the analysis, from the «democratic contestability» of the ownership of such technologies to the never-ending role of ethical-moral disciplines in the debate about the moral agentivity of such human creations.
KEYWORDS: Ai, Technology, Philosophy, Humanistic, Agentivity
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THE DISCIPLINARY POWER OF DIGITAL GOVERNMENTALITY
Domenico Talia
THE DISCIPLINARY POWER OF DIGITAL GOVERNMENTALITY
The relationship between the forms of knowledge and the mechanisms of power has characterized every era of human history, although each time this relationship has taken on different forms. The exercise of authority has never been totally separated from the ways of thinking and knowing of the time in which they were employed. In his studies on the mechanisms of exercise of power and on the government of people and societies, the French philosopher Michel Foucault introduced the concept of governmentality with the aim of recalling the link between governing (gouverner) and the way of thinking (mentalité), the relationship therefore between the mechanisms of power and government and the forms of rationality that organizes them. In recent years, the exercise of power, the management of people’s freedom, biopolitics and therefore also governmentality, as it was proposed by Foucault, have recorded the birth and growth of an eloquent and increasingly relevant relationship with the widespread use of digital technologies by people, companies and States. This recent relationship is put in place through the ways in which information technology is transforming the relationships between individuals and between them and the governing bodies of public and private lives. This article aims to analyze the relationships between digital technologies (e.g., algorithms, big data, Internet, social media, and artificial intelligence) and governmentality and the scenarios that these relationships are defining. This current context can be described through the concept of «digital governmentality» which must be understood as a complex modality that defines procedures, practices, analyzes, and calculations for the delimitation and management of the government of people through digital systems that are made up of algorithms, software, protocols and sophisticated data processing and machine learning procedures that concern and manage every human activity. The article analyzes the forms of digital governmentality and discusses its effects in the exercise of power through It apparatus, tools and devices.
KEYWORDS: Digital Power, Governmentality, Information Technology, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence.
LEGGI QUI: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.53227/113108
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A DIGITAL CONSTITUTIONALISM FRAMEWORK FOR AI
Nicola Palladino
A DIGITAL CONSTITUTIONALISM FRAMEWORK FOR AI
Ai is increasingly crucial in everyday life and social relations, raising both expectations and concerns. There is a growing consensus regarding the need to establish a trustworthy and human-centric framework to unlock the full potential of this technology. As a result, we are witnessing a proliferation of initiatives aimed at creating ethical codes for Ai development. However, many studies highlight concerns about a «principle-to-practice» gap, noting that Ai developers and deployers often struggle to ensure the effectiveness and enforcement of the principles they adhere to. This article seeks to bridge the gap by combining the approaches of Societal constitutionalism and Science and technology studies. It aims to provide a digital constitutionalism framework for Ai ethical governance, advancing the discussion on how to incorporate ethical and human rights standards into the socio-technical design of Ai systems. By analyzing the case of the Artificial intelligence act, the article illustrates the roles and responsibilities of various actors in translating fundamental rights into technical and organizational arrangements. It emphasizes the significance and concerns surrounding a hybrid constitutionalization process.
KEYWORDS: Artificial Intelligence, Digital Constitutionalism, Artificial Intelligence Act, Societal Constitutionalism, European Union.
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FACTORS AND POSSIBLE APPLICATION SCENARIOS OF EXPLAINABLE AI
Francesco Amato, Biagio Aragona, Mattia De Angelis
FACTORS AND POSSIBLE APPLICATION SCENARIOS OF EXPLAINABLE AI
The article focuses on the explainability of Artificial intelligence (Ai) algorithms used in public administrations. It presents agnostic and non-agnostic Explainable ai (Xai) frameworks with the main literature about their development and application and the advantages of the possible deployment of these frameworks to the sociotechnical system employed by public administrations. As a case study, we analyse the narratives of teachers’ X users about the algorithms that assigned school-teacher positions from 2016 to 2023, an algorithmic system that has generated unexpected and potentially problematic effects on society. We argue that the Xai framework can be employed by stakeholders as a guideline for the design of transparent systems by design, to prevent or mitigate the negative effects of these technologies and provide methods and tools for inspecting the processes performed by the automated decision systems.
KEYWORDS: Explainable Artificial Intelligence, Transparency, Impact Evaluation, Automated Decision Systems, Public Administration.
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«POLITICS AS A RIGGED GAME». AI GENERATED PRP DURING THE LAST SPANISH ELECTION
Vittorio Iervese, Nicola Riccardi
«POLITICS AS A RIGGED GAME». AI GENERATED PRP DURING THE LAST SPANISH ELECTION
In April 2013, the American journalist Matt Taibi published an article in «Rolling Stones» entitled: Everything is rigged: the biggest price-fixing scandal ever about finance and conspiracy theories. In 2016, Hbo launched the dystopian series Westworld with the claim: «The world is a rigged game, so you best learn to play dirty» echoing sentiments and opinions circulated on social networks. The three main dimensions of this discourse are: the lack of rules and «ethics» in the political arena; the dimension of the game as a metaphor and as a narrative form of political action; the importance of new technologies and «machines» as an aid in this rigged game. The rise of Artificial intelligence (Ai) has taken this dynamic to even more sophisticated levels than before. In recent years, one of the most worrying challenges has been the impact of Ai-powered disinformation on public opinion, electoral processes and democratic accountability. While public attention and expert analysis has mainly focused on the generation of fake news or distorted narratives, the use of Ai has dramatically increased the scope and potentially the effectiveness of the individual voter behaviour manipulation and microtargeting techniques that political campaigns have used since the early 2000s (e.g., reinforcement learning, services like Clogger Inc.). This article aims to shed light on these different and complementary strategies of using Ai in the construction of electoral consensus with a specific focus on their role in the last general elections held in Spain on 23 July 2023. The political dynamics of the elections, with Pedro Sanchez’s government defending its actions against the right-wing opposition parties Partido popular and Vox, offer a relevant scenario to explore how Ai-generated content and tools can influence and shape electoral behaviour. The analysis will not only be limited to the identification of themes, narratives and patterns of Ai-generated disinformation, but will try to provide examples of what can be defined as the Ai-generated paradoxical reinforcement process.
KEYWORDS: Ai, Political Communication, Spanish Politics, Ai-Powered Communication, Ai-Technology.
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PEOPLE LIFE CYCLE IN THE COMPASS OF DIGITAL CITIES.
Daniela Piana
PEOPLE LIFE CYCLE IN THE COMPASS OF DIGITAL CITIES. BUILDING CAPACITIES TO ACT IN THE DIGITAL SOCIETY AS A CROSS-GENERATIONAL AND INTERTEMPORAL STRATEGY
Digital transformation is deemed an extraordinarily effective catalyzer of processes of change in the societal and economic systems and, consequently, a potential effective drive for improvement in the inclusiveness featured by urban textures and cities’ governance. Alongside this narrative, the comprehensive global agenda promoting digital infrastructures and digital tools to create favorable conditions of readability, sustainability, transparency, and accountability of public services is today streamlining most of the domestic efforts made to improve the quality of life of their present – and future – citizens. However, taking equality of opportunity as the criterion against which, the quality of these efforts is assessed proves to be a shortcoming if a much more refined and sharper set of indicators is not properly integrated into the reasoning. This article sketches a potential research agenda and explores accordingly the potential of a new paradigm for a more suitable, dynamic, and fully-fledged inclusive approach in policy design and implementation. It argues that the effectiveness of the exercise of freedoms related to the fundamental rights of citizens intimately depends on the capacities and abilities that are built alongside the enactment of policies that tackle educational cleavages, cognitive fractures and barriers, and age cleavages. The article pioneers the integration of a Sen-inspired approach in the design of learning and smart cities.
KEYWORDS: Equalities, Diversities, Digital Cities, Empowerment, Capabilities.
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DIGITAL POST-HUMANISM: ONTO-RELATIONAL BASIS FOR POLITICAL THEORY 4.0
Claudia Favarato
DIGITAL POST-HUMANISM: ONTO-RELATIONAL BASIS FOR POLITICAL THEORY 4.0
Taking as a departure events in western Africa, this study analyses the political idea of the human in its analogue and digital versions. It considers how the digital rhetoric generated by authentic or human accounts acted as a co-occurring force in turmoil and political agitation in Guinea (Conakry), Mali, and Burkina-Faso. Focusing on the humanness of these digital-humans, it argues for a fresh approach to post-humanism which benefits from the use of an African epistemic lens and a relational approach to political theory. The analysis of the digital-human investigates posthumanism thought as the outcome of the in-between, or of intersubjective interactions among humans. The inquiry moves beyond ontology to embrace an onto-relational perspective which considers the ideas of humanness and the political in comprehensive terms, grounded on the intersubjective sphere. The analytical standpoint produces the notion of digital-humans or digital post-humans as new onto-relational beings and outlines the forthcoming political implications on modes of intersubjective interaction and the structures of power relations. Lastly, it argues for the elaboration of political models and paradigms capable of making sense of the analogue and digital political realities emerging today and possibly dominating the future.
KEYWORDS: Onto-Relationality, Digital-Humans, Post-Humanism, Digital Political Theory, African Epistemology.