Big data, internet of things, artificial intelligence, virtual reality: in a single expression "Digital Revolution", a process of digitization of information, new technologies and knowledge that has now become part of our daily life. A revolution that presents great opportunities and fascinating challenges but also risks that must be understood in order to be able to face them. All of this was discussed during a special edition of the world conference "The Future of Science" entitled "Digital Revolution: how our lives will change". The location was the great hall of the University of Milan Bicocca: on one side a pool of speakers, authentic brains operating on the new frontiers of digital, on the other many students of the university listening and asking questions. An objective that of technical-scientific dissemination, which is the basis of the mission of the three Foundations organizing "The Future of the Science"; the Umberto Veronesi Foundation, the Silvio Tronchetti Provera Foundation and the Giorgio Cini Foundation.
A scenario of a world increasingly characterized by a connection between machines and between machines and man, an astronomical business estimated - according to Alberto Sangiovanni-Vintelli, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of Berkeley - at 32 trillion dollars: a mind-boggling figure with 21 zeros. In the not too distant future, cities will become smart cities, houses will be smart homes, cars will be self-driving. “And it is precisely the automotive industry that attracts ever more massive investments from the great protagonists of the digital revolution with the aim of winning the challenge of self-driving cars. A goal that will also have momentous repercussions on many industrial sectors, starting with the insurance sector, which will have to make contracts with the vehicle manufacturer and no longer with the private driver. Apple and Google are now investing higher sums in the automotive industry than in their core business because they believe that mobile phones and the internet itself have already reached levels close to saturation".
Google with its subsidiary Waymo - engaged in the study of driverless vehicles - has signed an agreement with the FCA without mutually precluding other partnerships. The result is a fleet of minivans, Pacifica, which will be tested in 2017. Apple is betting on autonomous driving with the long-hidden Project Titan. Intel, for its part, recently spent 15 billion dollars to acquire the Israeli Mobileye, making it the largest acquisition in the autonomous car sector. Mobileye alone covers 70% of the global market for anti-collision and advanced driver assistance systems: its customers include BMW and Tesla. Uber also sees the future in unmanned vehicles: last year Travis Kalanick's group got their hands on Otto, a company specializing in autonomous trucks founded by a former Google, Antony Levandowski. Uber's main American rival, Lyft is instead working together with General Motors, which has recently taken over Cruise Automation.
But be careful, warned professor Derrick De Kerckhove, former director of the McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto, to rely blindly on artificial intelligence. “The virtual space, the one that occupies the Internet, represents together with the real space and the mental space, a third environment that must be managed. Otherwise the digital revolution will end up overthrowing the status of the individual: as an autonomous, independent person with free will, man risks becoming totally a prisoner of data, a victim of his own digital unconscious”. All the more so since the gigantic avalanche of data produced on the web, with inevitable impacts both on society and on the governance of the States itself, is 80% unstructured.
“Hence the need – underlined Alessandro Curioni, European vice president and director of IBM Research in Zurich, in the presence of this explosion of data that is overcoming human capacity, to cope with it and understand its intrinsic meaning. A colossal job but it is a challenge to be overcome so that human intelligence guides the development of artificial intelligence and not vice versa”. That's why all participants in the meeting of "The future of Science", closed by the rector of the university, Cristina Messa - in addition to the aforementioned there were also Giuseppe Testa, professor of molecular biology at the University of Milan, and Carlo Batini, professor in the Bicocca University Department of Computer Science – warned the students, reminding them that there is no artificial intelligence that counts if you don't have more than solid foundations in fundamental subjects such as mathematics, physics, biology.
