Milano si candida a ospitare un’agenzia dell’Onu dedicata all’IA

On November 9th, a broad representation of institutions, business community, and research gathered in Palazzo Turati's Conference Hall in Milan to support the city's bid to host a UN agency dedicated to artificial intelligence governance. The proposal, presented by the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy, Assolombarda, and Conf-commercio Milano Lodi Monza Brianza on October 12th, was backed unanimously by representatives of industrial and commercial businesses, scientific and humanistic research centers, the region, and the municipality.

House of Senate President Ignazio La Russa and Deputy Secretary Alessio Butti delivered messages of support from the Parliament and Government. Now, it is expected that a parliamentary motion from all parties will be adopted soon, and the procedure to officially register the Italian candidacy will begin. Silvio Savarese, Chief Scientist at Salesforce AI Research and a member of the independent international scientific panel of the United Nations on artificial intelligence, noted that the proposal will subsequently have to be presented to the UN with the backing of the Italian government and the European Commission.

"We need to direct the development of artificial intelligence," says Alvise Biffi, President of Assolombarda. "Lombardy is one of the most industrially intensive regions in Europe. Placing a UN agency in Milan to make sense of artificial intelligence answers the need to address the impact of this technology on work, production, everyday life, and to support the need to keep humans in control of the system."

The goal is to find a consensus in producing standards for measuring the quality of models and criteria for assessing the human impact of artificial intelligence. "Cognitive capital dissipates if humans delegate thinking to machines," reminds Giuseppe Riva, Director of the Humane Technology Lab at Cattolica University of the Sacred Heart: "This is a problem for individuals and businesses.

If business functions are delegated to artificial intelligences, companies will become alike and competitiveness risks dispersing: it is people who make the difference." Indeed, the need for governance of artificial intelligence has never been clearer. Large producers, from Anthropic to OpenAI, have signaled the danger of uncontrolled technological development.

The Americans propose self-regulation. At the UN, however, it is thought that it is better to find independent reference points to evaluate the quality and risk of models, not dependent on large producers. Milan tries to contribute to this fundamental debate.