In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey talks with economists Luciana Lazzaretti and Stefania Oliva of the University of Florence about the role of artificial intelligence in contemporary cultural transformation.  The authors discuss the genesis of computer culture from the garages of California hippies who dreamed of a changed world and unexpectedly unleashed the forces of science and art for the sake of entrepreneurship. Moving forward, the authors discuss the nature of a “post-truth” world and how the many faces of reality can converge towards the truth.  Finally, Lazaretti and Oliva address the need to foster critical thinking to cope with the threats posed by AI in terms of misinformation and disinformation.

John Torpey  00:00

The rise of artificial intelligence is on everybody’s mind today. What is artificial intelligence, routinely abbreviated AI? What is it going to do to society? Will it take away our jobs? Can machines really think better than human beings? Isn’t the creation of culture beyond the capacity of a machine? These questions and more gnaw at us as we try to make sense of the world that AI is bringing into being. 

John Torpey  00:30

Welcome to International Horizons, a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly and diplomatic expertise to bear on our understanding of a wide range of international issues. My name is John Torpey, and I’m director of the Ralph Bunche Institute at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. 

John Torpey  00:50

We are fortunate to have with us today Luciana Lazzerretti and Stefania Oliva of the University of Florence in Italy (where I had the good fortunte to spend a year once). Luciana Lazzeretti is Professor of Economics and Management in the Department of the same name at the University of Florence. She is director of the Doctoral School of Social Sciences at the University of Florence and is also a member of the board of the Italian National PhD Program in Sustainable Development and Climate Change. She recently published a book titled The Rise of the Algorithmic SocietySociety and the Role of Arts and Culture with Edward Elgar (2023). Stefania Oliva is Assistant Professor in “Economics and Management” at the University of Florence. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Florence and was a Research Fellow there from 2017 to 2022. She and Professor Lazzeretti have co-authored a number of papers together, including “The Emergence of Artificial Intelligence in the Regional Sciences: A Literature Review” in the Journal European Planning Studies. Thank you for joining us today, Luciana Lazzerretti and Stefania Oliva.

Luciana Lazzerretti  02:14

Thank you so much to everybody. And first of all, I want to thank Professor Klaus for his kind invitation. So this is very nice for me and will be appreciated. Also, to do this kind of registration. I’m here with Stefania Oliva, that works in project that is an improvement of my book. And I would be very happy if at the end of this presentation, we can give you a general idea about this project.

John Torpey  03:08

Okay.

Stefania Oliva  03:10

Thank you very much, Professor Torpey, for having us here. We are very honored to can share with you some of our research, our new future investigation on the topic of artificial intelligence and the role of culture.

John Torpey  03:29

Great. Well, it’s great to have you both here. And obviously, as I said at the beginning of my introduction, the topic you’re working on is on everybody’s lips and on everybody’s mind. So I expect this to be very illuminating conversation. So but let’s just start at the beginning. I mean, what is artificial intelligence? Everybody’s heard about it now, but probably very few people really know what it is. What kind of an innovation is it? And what would you say are its main features?

Luciana Lazzerretti  03:59

Yes, what I have done in this book is something of different because I’m a professor of economics and culture. So, I try to tell another story about this artificial intelligence. So it’s a story, it’s a narrative story, is not a technological one. I tried to use other lens to discuss about this question. In general, when we want to define artificial intelligence, you use a lot of concepts, a lot of tools, something like, big data algorithms, machine learning, and so on. These are are just concepts or tools. But my idea is that we have artificial intelligence as a new technological and economic paradigm starting from the study of Fremont and Carlota Perez, for instance. Because what is changed are not only the technological progress, but also the impact into the society. And when you speak about society, obviously, you speak about the culture of the society.

Luciana Lazzerretti  05:19

So, the general idea is to underline that we arrived at this point, thanks to three main theories that allowed this rise: network science, complexity, science, and neuroscience. These three disciplines converge towards artificial intelligence. So, everybody is speaking about that, and a new discipline emerged. Which kind of discipline? The discipline is maybe call data science and artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning are a complex ecosystem where humans and machine coexist. This was my idea. artificial intelligence is an innovation, absolute a disruptive innovation. So, we spend a lot of time to discuss about that, if you want to speak in economics, but I want to remember all at least some features. I put time feature and discuss in my book about this feature, because the book is divided in three parts mainly. The first part is started with a definition and idea (I don’t want to use the word definition) an idea about what artificial intelligence means. And then what is much important is the impact into the society because my book is about the rise of the algorithm in society is the point. So I tried to collect some idea, thanks to a lot of friends that come from this discipline, because this book was done during pandemic and I get the possibility to read a lot of thanks to a lot of friends that come to different disciplines. So, I would like to have a general idea about the contest.

Luciana Lazzerretti  07:23

So, the second part is about this change in society: Which kind of tools we have, and so on and so on. So, I realize that as an economist, I have to change everything, I have to change my view. And in the second part, I discuss a little bit about impact in economic sense about the most innovative part, which is the part that discuss the role of culture, the level of culture in the sense of arts and culture, because I am Italian, you know, so, for me, this is a perspective, but the culture may be two or three phases, and an opportunity. And it can be something that facing the artificial intelligence give us not a solution, but the perspective. This is in general, the idea.

Luciana Lazzerretti  08:28

So the future, our attractiveness, multidisciplinary, pervasiveness, the connectivity transversality, the cross fertilization, the disrupting character, and the opacity. So, there is a big dark side of artificial intelligence too, that we have to discuss. And I am here, because I think that here United States because you started before us to use this kind of innovation, you can give us some insight about the future much more than we have in Europe. Because if phenomena started before here.

Luciana Lazzerretti  09:13

So, if you want to speak about artificial intelligence, I try to stress, a dramatic story. It’s a creative story. So, I don’t want to be like a computer scientists, you know, but as a professor of culture, as an artist, because according to society [art and culture] are a narrative of the past, an underlying past, because everything is constructed on data that belongs to the past, not to the future. So you manage information, but this information and data is information of the past and you pretend to decide the future So it’s a story, the born of artificial intelligence, is a story of creativity and counterculture. It all began in California in the latest 60s by a group of engineers who were white males and a bit hippie. Most of them protest the Vietnam War, but some of them inside a garage, dreamed to change the world. And the pioneer of the web are not afraid to take into account what the neighbor an economist have to do, this their unit of analysis. The unit of analysis for them was to analyze everything without setting limits, or space, and time, except those of the web. And this is completely the contrary of what we teach at our university. So this is a dream. And the dream now is not a dream anymore, is a reality. Who are the protagonists of this revolution? What have they done and what they leave? So what is very important is to underline that inventors were engineers, scientific dimension, these were computer scientists: Jobs, Gates, Branson and so on. Everybody belongs not to humanities, so normally, in Italy, you would think that creativity and arts belong to humanities. No! in this case, we are discussing about science. And the other point is, that is a special science, because it not science for else, is not science for biology? No! they focus on entertainment, and communication. So you use science for entertainment and communication that normally belongs to social science, you know. So we have a ipad, a iphone, PlayStation, social network, and so on. So the impact is into the social dimension, first of all, than in the scientific dimension.

John Torpey  12:25

Can I just interrupt for a second? I mean, as it happens, I just heard Walter Isaacson, the other night, talk about his new book about Elon Musk. And you probably know his biography of Steve Jobs. But and he was making the point that Steve Jobs was very insistent that things weren’t just strictly scientific, technical kind of developments that, you know, you had to also read culture, you had to read literature, you had to read, or know about artistic developments in order to really create, I don’t know if he intended a disruptive technology exactly, but to create something that really would change the world; it couldn’t be purely a kind of scientific technical innovation, that wouldn’t really move the needle, as we say. So I wonder, I mean, it sounds like that’s in effect, what you’re saying as well.

Luciana Lazzerretti  13:24

So, maybe. I find the right point of view to discuss. I mean, at the end of the story. So if you want to enjoy so ever relationally with technology is the point. So, I in the sense, I say some positive things, because this is a vision of the creative is not only a vision of a scientist, this is a special person in we have find in our in our history, such kind of a person that combined Sadie from from Leonardo da Vinci was gonna

John Torpey  14:14

I was gonna say, Leonardo da Vinci. thats what  people is  thinking,

Luciana Lazzerretti  14:20

that isn’t a very special moment in our life, because I want to spoke about Leonardo da Vinci because the cross fertilization and Marg discipline is particularly important in this moment. At the end of the 90 when I was student, maybe some students listen to me now, I don’t know. The things are quite clear, you know, but define where are you speaking about technology? We’re speaking about technology transfer, mainly because we have technology where the stable world and so on. And so for us, yeah, we have done some revolution in six days. But after there is sun, you know, the horizon was clear in a sense. So this guy, I think, that thinks in a positive way

John Torpey  15:17

This guy being Steve Jobs

Luciana Lazzerretti  15:18

Yes, yes. This is the point. Yeah. It’s completely different from Elon Musk for me. Yes, absolutely. I don’t want to discuss about that. But I am disgusted about creativity for creativity, because they want to take care about everything. Well, the dream festival. And now it’s much more about praxis. Everybody is an inventor and an innovator. Most of them are. But I don’t know enough the story of Elon Musk. I don’t know.

Luciana Lazzerretti  15:56

But before to go there, I want to stress another point that is important for me, that I am studying regional development. This kind of innovation was born in a creative place. Which creative place? University, research Center, startup cultural district. So it’s important this point. Because if you remember the story of Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, you start with the story of social nature in Boston, and so on. But to transform these ideas into an innovation, you have to go to California, because you need venture capitalists in order to do that. So this is the relation between the innovation and invention in some way, they are not the same things. Not every invention became innovation, because innovation is an economic phenomena.

John Torpey  17:10

So, I mean, I’m sort of interested in like you suggested, at one point that this technology is disruptive. And I’m sort of curious, what does that mean? I mean, economists use the notion of a general purpose technology, like electricity, and sort of propagation of electricity to homes and businesses and industrial installations and things like that. And I mean is artificial intelligence a general purpose technology in the same way that’s going to sort of make a massive difference in in productivity. I mean, you probably know this famous comment of Robert, the Nobel Prize winning economist, Robert Solow about how we can see the productivity numbers of the computer revolution, (I forgotten now exactly how he put it but) we can see the computer revolution everywhere, except in the productivity numbers, I think was the thing. And so I guess I’m sort of wondering how you think about the economic kind of significance of this innovation?

Luciana Lazzerretti  18:24

This innovation is discructive in the sense that, for instance, we use iPhone, and iPhone, you have not anymore your clock, for instance. So we know, we don’t have so this chapter means that you don’t need any more clock. The clock is just watch. Sorry. Yeah, it’s just for collection…

John Torpey  18:53

Was to keep track of your steps, I think? And your heart rate.

Luciana Lazzerretti  18:57

So is this chapter about this reason, because there is a concentration of use in the same tool. And so what’s happened about the other firms doing the other things? So that doesn’t exist anymore because the function was done by another tool, and this answer disruptive. But it’s also now active and started from the story of Schumpeterian stupidity that creativity is creative destruction. And change, the change of digital transformation, I think now is much more important for the social dimension. Because we have many transformations. (I have to define again a definition) Stuart Brand says the inventor of the term a personal computer said, “You cannot change human nature, but you can change tools, you can change techniques and that way you can change civilization.” And this is what happened, this was the point. If you want I can continue about the change, because the changes are so important, I have discussed about the changes of the system of value, the change of the logic of scientific discovery, the data are different, the research methodology, because I am a professor and researcher, so, what I what we see now that we have to change completely our research methodology. The business, the product, the sector have changed, and I think also the nature of capitalism and the concept of work, there is a lot of important analysis now on the concept of work. But also the role of culture and the territories does change. I give some example, if you want: The value system is different to what we had before: We think that we have to do a very hard work. Now everybody speaking about pleasure. What is important is the substantial of the things and now as much more to speak about accessory. I give an example about the meal, the young people now don’t go to the dinner, off to the lunch, they go to aperitivo to have a drink if you have to drink before so dinner, yes. But normally, for instance, in Italy, they have only this one, they don’t have a dinner, they just take some some tapas, some something to drink, and that’s all and then go to the event; they don’t go to dinner because it’s too expensive. This is one thing and then this personalization are so important, but it’s much more importantly communication. The true is not only one, but to have another idea of past too the space and the time are not to defined but became undefined because intangible things are not defined. And the human capital and the talent now became producers because they produce information for free. Given this one. And the game became an educational scheme for inter society. And the most relevant cultural industry now is video game, before we discussing about books with the healthy about movie, we’ll be discussing about audio visual and so on. Now, as an economist, you can say that the video game is the most important cultural industry in this time. This is a story about a man I don’t want to spoil…

John Torpey  23:49

Can I can I intervene and just say that your categories included before and after situations described or… you mentioned truth and post truth. And of course, you know, among the other things about AI that people are nervous about and maybe most fundamentally this concern about whether truth is going to be in a way identifiable anymore. I mean, basically a lot of this has to do with concerns about political misinformation or disinformation. But I mean, there’s also been as you probably know a kind of movement in the social sciences and humanities in the last few decades, that has itself called truth into question. That was not because AI generated papers that seemed like a real thing that somebody actually wrote but rather for various kinds of philosophical reasons, they doubted the reliability, essentially of truth. So I mean, I think this gets at one of the kind of very negative, or potentially very negative, aspects of AI, on which a lot of attention has been focused, seems to me in recent months and years, but then there’s also the kind of positive side of all this: I keep thinking about a book that I read, I can’t remember the author now, but it’s called Fully Automated Luxury Communism. So, in contrast to this very worried view of what AI is going to do to us, you know, there’s also this view that we’re kind of reaching the circumstances that in a way that Karl Marx predicted or hoped for 150 years ago that we could stop having to do all the drudgery and forcing people who have no other means of survival to do that sort of thing. And, you know, get the pleasure in life, and to live out our dreams of what we think we could be, and that sort of thing. So I’m curious, you know, how you would respond?

Luciana Lazzerretti  26:05

Yes, it’s a big question this one. So what I can say, is that true is multiple and depends on what perspective is considered. At the end of the story, it is nothing more than a shared process. Because what I write in my book is Indian story of the six blind men and the elephant, because everybody touches the different parts of the elephant, and everyone says, a different truth. But at the end, they stay all together and said to the king the same thing, because they share. So if the, in this sense, you can say that at social network level, there is some true that are shared, for instance, so there is not only a real dimension of the story, but in any case the true depends on the community of the humans that decide all together, that “one thing” may be recognized as a “two things.” I don’t think that there is only a problem of artificial intelligence, the problem is the human to use  of artificial intelligence. Because to be able to recognize if something is a fake, or is true, is the parents buy at the end of the story the education of the people and the capacity of the people to recognize things and speak up maybe with the other and say, maybe everybody is speaking about one thing. So these things became true for the community, for the community. So in Italian, you say, “vocce di poppolo, vocce di Dio”

John Torpey  28:18

The voice of the people, the voice of God.

Luciana Lazzerretti  28:22

Yeah. Maybe it’s not true, but for the community, your reputation is that. So it depends. About to about two is considered there is a lot of philosopher for instance, Ferrari that is speaking a lot about the concept of true. I discussed a little bit this question into the book. And, obviously, the artificial intelligence in this topic is very relevant. And, and we have to have new tools to recognize the things. When I wrote this book. Chat GPT didn’t exist, because I finished the book during the pandemic. So that was 2020. And in two years, everything changed. So the speed of this phenomena is  too difficult for the Humanities, because the adaptation that we need is not a physiological adaptation, this phenomena. So you can believe or not believe, but you need to go back to the critical capacity of the people. So in the sense, I think that education is very important. Just to give you an example of I thought about the story of Chat GPT when I go back to Italy, I’m thinking here, how can I can manage these tools? Well, the first, the first week, I can say to my students, please close your phone or your computer, and we discuss. The week after we can give them research topics on Chat GPT and see what emerge. And then, the other week discuss together that one and try to go in depth to the different argument, but at the oral dimension, not written, oral. Because they want to see the person directly to see the eyes and so on. So, if they understand they recognize, but if you remain always online, if you remain all is mediated by the tools is difficult to do that.

Luciana Lazzerretti  31:00

Go back to the method of scientific research, one thing that was impressive, for me is the story of data. Because for us for Stefania, for you, maybe the data are not always accessible. And we have to work hard to find information and to collect and then try theorize in formulating hypotheses. And now, the data are for free, maybe manipulated. The data is needed to find the only correlation, because what is important, we have a lot of data and find correlation and similarity to identify the emerging pattern from big data. So that means the story of the theory, the data speaks for themselves or themselves. So what says some  computer scientists, this was the point. So we are in the year without theory. And this is another big problem. So we discuss about  which kind of theory for a data driven society. And this is a very important point. So the competition is not doing more to the capacity to theorize or to do  some exercise with mathematics or statistics and so on. But the competitive advantages is the computational capacity of the algorithms and the access to the database. So is a financial capacity in some way. And this is another big problem.

John Torpey  33:11

Right. Well, I mean, this has been a fascinating exploration. But I wanted to give  Stefania and I realized I had been mispronouncing your name, but I wasn’t sure where the accent fell. But you are going to tell us a little bit about the project that you’re doing kind of growing out of this?

Luciana Lazzerretti  33:32

Yes, because after this book, that there is no number in this book, just reflection and this is my small book. And this is was an objective for me, not too many words, but justice and purpose. And then we have done lot of work also using the economics methodology we try to use to compare econometrics to with machine learning and topic modeling and other techniques that we want to try which can the results to give you the instrument or the other. But in general,  this was by the side of methodology. In the side of the problem, our our interest was into the European project that was named “Changing Cultural Heritage and Active Innovation for Next Generation in Europe” and was about the city of art, because I am studying for a long time the city and especially cities of art, such as Florence and New York because for me, New York is also city where art and other things. And this is a topic in which one Stefania is involved. If you want to say something about that.

John Torpey  34:57

Okay. Please do yes.

Stefania Oliva  34:59

Thank you. Yes, as Professor Lazzareti  told inspired by her work, several research projects that has started funded by the Next Generation Europe Fund that is coming from the recovery of the COVID. And especially the project in which we are involved put to the center the topic of cultural heritage and how cultural heritage can have a role in front of the new societal challenges, such as those of climate change the specialities of artificial intelligence and digital transition.

Stefania Oliva  35:42

We are studying this topic in a very wide research group of different universities from Italy and us how our Department of Economics University of Florence, we are especially working on their cultural policies for the city transformation and the governance of our cities and the role of cultural organization in the digital transition of the city. We are doing especially three specific research, one is on the city of Florence to try to understand how the digital technologies and in cultural organization are changing the reputation of the city and the image of the city particularly looking at the case of  galleries and the use of social media in the city’s galleries and how this can influence the transformation of the city in the main city, and then working on to Italian former capitals of culture, the town the city of Pistoia. Also in this case, to try to understand which can be the role of culture organization and the use of new digital tools to support the revitalization interest from transformation adaptation to the city in the context of digital transition to drive our cultural late generation transformation process. So, we are we have started this project in the first month of 2023. So, we are still ongoing processes. And we are we have just some first results in terms of publication and and presentation of this project but we will see what would happen next with going ahead with these researches.

John Torpey  38:01

Right well you’ll have to come back and tell us when you when you have some results how that project has worked out. But that’s it for today’s episode. I want to thank  Luciana Lazzerretti and Stefania Oliva for their insights into the coming of artificial intelligence and its consequences for contemporary society. Lookfor us on the New Books Network and remember to subscribe and rate International Horizons on Spotify and Apple podcasts. I want to thank was Oswaldo Mena Aguilar for his technical assistance and to acknowledge Duncan McKay for sharing his song International Horizons as the theme music for the show. This is John Torpey, saying thanks for joining us, and we look forward to having you with us for the next episode of International Horizons.