For those who do not have time: Summary of the White Paper

This White Paper is aimed at analyzing the impact of Artificial Intelligence in our society and, more specifically, in the Public Administration, in order to promote digital transformation. Its the result of the work of the Agency for Digital Italy and with a task force of experts. The objective is to facilitate the adoption of these technologies in the Italian Public Administration, to improve services to citizens and businesses, thus giving a decisive impulse to innovation, the proper functioning of the economy and, more generally, to progress in daily life.

Today, Artificial Intelligence can drive our vehicles, take care of elderly or sick people, perform dangerous or weary jobs and help us make informed decisions based on the rational management of large amounts of data. Also, it can enable us to communicate in languages we do not know, help us study and increase the cultural or entertainment experiences at our disposal. In the Public Administration, it can be used profitably in the healthcare, education and judiciary system, public employment, security and, more generally, in the management of relations with citizens, which can be simplified and at the same time be more effective, quick, and efficient.

To achieve these objectives, first of all, it is necessary to understand what is meant by “Artificial Intelligence”, from a theoretical and technical point of view. In doing so, it is possible to understand the opportunities and also the limits, as well as the most immediate and effective areas of application. Particular attention in this white paper is given to the tools that can have immediate positive effects on the work of the Public Administration, such as the use of chatbots to answer citizens’ questions, help them to find information they need and cut through layers of bureaucracy, or the use of robots to take care of the sick, algorithms that read the results of medical exams, those that help students improve their performance. Moreover, attention is given to the means for monitoring and managing careers, those for the surveillance of public places or for the recognition of network threats, tools for the rational management of problems generated by natural disasters and many others.

In order to successfully implement these technologies, it is necessary to evaluate the different challenges that must be faced to integrate Artificial Intelligence in a profitable way. First of all, the ethical problem (the Ethical challenge), which is the basis of every other reflection in this field. It is needed to strongly affirm the anthropocentric principle stating that Artificial Intelligence is always at the service of people and not vice versa. Moreover, it is necessary to formulate general principles of equity with the aim of using these new technologies to address some universal needs such as to respect freedom and individual and collective rights. More specifically, in the field of ethics, the functioning of Artificial Intelligence raises some problems, i.e. those related to the quality and neutrality of data, the responsibility of those who use algorithms, transparency and the accountability, as well as the protection of privacy. The aim is to show how the incorrect use of the technologies at our disposal can contribute to the development of a more unjust society that fuels inequalities, while awareness of the risks involved in relying on “smart” machines can help us minimize the latter and plan a better world.

The second challenge that is faced is the technological one: Artificial Intelligence is not yet able to reproduce the complex functioning of the human mind, but only some of its circumscribed capacities. Therefore, one of the goals is to make these technologies a bit more similar to our way of relating to the world, despite being something yet to be built. Immediately, work is on concepts of personalization and adaptivity, to make sure that the data and algorithms at our disposal are increasingly more effective in allowing us to operate individually in some specific areas of our daily life that, in this White Paper, are once again closely linked to the work of the Public Administration (in addition to the sectors already mentioned above, focus is on the tax, mobility and transport sectors).

We then move on to the fundamental issue of skills that must be developed in the age of Artificial Intelligence, and it is done from two points of view: that of citizens and that of public administration employees. For the former, it is necessary to understand how the algorithms and databases on which the latter operate work, to become a worker in the IT sector that produces this kind of application. However, even for those who want to engage in other sectors, it will be necessary to know how to move in areas that will increasingly assign to machines tasks that were previously performed by people (typically, the simplest and most repetitive ones). Lastly, more simply, in every moment of daily life it will be fundamental to understand how to relate with machines to exercise the right of citizenship in the best way in a world that is more and more populated by the latter. The state must provide answers for all these needs by providing a school system able to keep up with the times or by encouraging permanent learning. However, in order to achieve these goals, the state employees must be properly prepared. Therefore, not only teachers of schools of all levels, but more generally employees at the offices of the Public Administration, will have to be able to understand what kind of Artificial Intelligence tools integrate in work processes and which ones to offer to citizens. In this sense, a properly trained Public Administration can become a real innovation gym.

The fourth challenge is related the algorithms that are based on the Artificial Intelligence. First of all, they must be of good quality, exempt as much as possible from biases, prejudices, due to errors in their creation when they must be “annotated” by human beings, to teach machines how to interpret them. This is why it is important to create the best conditions, especially organizational ones in the contexts in which the data is produced. There is then the problem of data from the Internet of Things, objects and sensors that, despite being connected to one another, are fragmented, heterogeneous and not very interoperable. Furthermore, there is the so-called linked open data of public bodies, a real mine of information that would be very useful to generate applications of Artificial Intelligence at the service of citizens. However, they must first be retrieved and filtered by means of semantic technologies and shared ontologies. Lastly, precisely for this kind of data, we highlight the need to make sure that anyone wishing to use it can have equal and non-discriminatory access.

The fifth challenge is the legal one, focused, as always when it comes to regulating the activity of the public administration, on the balance between the interests of the community and those of the individual. In this regard, for example, in the field of Artificial Intelligence it is necessary to reconcile the principle of transparency of administrative deeds or the protection of personal data with the right to privacy. However, another problem is that of the relationship between the necessary transparency of the functioning of the algorithms that make decisions of public relevance and the protection of the copyright of the creators of the algorithms. Or, also in the case where the public administration uses programs that help it to make decisions, or even decide autonomously, it is necessary to face the problem of the accountability, that is the actual legal responsibility upstream. All these issues are addressed in the White Paper, also proposing some technical solutions already recommended in the European Regulation on the protection of personal data (GDPR), which will become applicable in all EU countries starting from 25 May. In general, however, the principles that must be followed are the transparency of algorithms and the logic of building the databases on which they operate, the definition of the related responsibilities of users and the need to prevent the use of data on the part of the Public Administration generates pervasive social control, in contrast with the fundamental rights of the citizen.

The sixth challenge is in charge of the Public Administration and consists in the actions necessary to accompany the transformation of the Country towards the adoption of Artificial Intelligence, above all in the management of the relationship between the State, citizens and businesses. As anticipated in the section on skills, the White Paper underlines the importance of training public employees especially officials and managers, to understand the functioning, benefits and possible problems, ethical and technical, related to this kind of technology. The basic principle is that Artificial Intelligence should serve above all to support people and help them carry out their activities, but not to replace them. The importance of involving end users in all phases of public service design is also highlighted.

This last point anticipates the theme of the seventh challenge: preventing inequalities. Indeed, Artificial Intelligence must be accessible to everyone, so that anyone can benefit from its advantages. Because of that, it must of simple and immediate use. Also, this kind of technology can reduce social inequalities, as we have already seen for education and training, health and disability, knowledge and the guarantee of rights. However, Artificial Intelligence can also increase inequalities, if the data it feeds on or the algorithms that make it up are affected by discriminatory bias. Therefore, the Public Administration must pay great attention in acquiring or directing the development of this type of solutions to ensure that they are inclusive, accessible and transparent, that they comply with the requirements imposed by law, which precisely do not have discriminatory profiles that are free of bias.

In order to verify the actual benefits deriving from the use of Artificial Intelligence in the Public Administration, the eighth challenge regards the measurement of the impact of the impact of this kind of technology. This problem is faced, once again, from two points of view: that of the citizen and that of the institutions. In the first case, we reason in terms of improving people’s quality of life and customer satisfaction; in the second case, it reflects on the optimization of organizational processes in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. However, on both issues, it is emphasized that it is necessary to conduct both quantitative and qualitative research based on multidisciplinarity, since the impact of technology in the existence of individuals and organizations has different facets, both economic and technical, but also social, cultural, psychological and anthropological. The measurements of all these variables are generally not conducted by the Public Administration with the necessary frequency; however, on a sensitive subject such as the introduction of Artificial Intelligence in the functioning mechanisms of the State, these practices must be carried out decisively.

The last challenge, the human being, is that of developing a sense around Artificial Intelligence, understood as the need to make sure that everyone, both citizens and Institutions, is aware of the significant importance of these tools, their advantages, but also their problems. To this end, experiments are proposed in the fields of design, arts, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and in general, of the humanities, which can create bridges between research, industry, and society.

At the same time, Artificial Intelligence is technological and social innovation that can radically transform our world, both for good and for bad. Therefore, It is necessary to accompany it carefully, managing it in the direction that appears to be more just. Because of that, the White Paper concludes with a set of recommendations that the Agency for Digital Italy, the Task Force and the community set around it, made up of more than 500 experts and citizens, aim to share with their readers and their citizenship, in order to raise a discussion that must not stop, but that must accompany the processes of development, modernization and improvement of the state and of our society from here onwards.

Eudaimonia (gr. εὐδαιμονία, lett. “being in the company of a good demon”), as illustrated by Aristotle defines human well-being as the highest virtue for a society. Eudaimonia can also mean “prosperity”, as it denotes an overall condition of well-being in which human beings perceive their benefits starting from the conscious contemplation of ethical considerations thath elp us define how we wish to live. Whether our ethical substratum is Western (Aristotelian, Kantian), Oriental (Shinto, Confucian), African (ubuntu) or attributable to any other tradition, creating autonomous and intelligent systems that explicitly respect the inalienable human rights and cultural values of users, it is possible to give priority to the improvement of human well-being as a parameter for progress in the “algorithmic age”. Recognizing the potential of a holistic approach, prosperity should in this way become more important than the pursuit of one-dimensional objectives such as increased productivity or a country’s GDP growth. Source: The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, 2017, IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Ref. (https://standards.ieee.org/develop/indconn/ec/ead_executive_summary_v2.pdf)