[translated by Google from Italian]

Mario Paternostro and Franco Manzitti interview Tomaso Poggio, the Genoese who changed the world

Tomaso Poggio, Genoese, a professor at MIT in Boston, has been considered one of the inventors of artificial intelligence for many years.

He is in Genoa in these days, to present his book “Cervelli, mentis, algorithms” written with Marco Magrini, yesterday he held a crowded conference-lection to scientific readings and gave an exclusive interview to Primocanale. What is artificial intelligence? What's it for? What help can you give to man?

Poggio answers all these questions, highlighting the results of these extraordinary research: “We have systems that are almost as smart as we do.” How did this incredible journey begin? Poggio replied that it all began when he was a kid, becoming passionate about physics and problems such as the nature of time and space. Then he went to the study of the flies' brain. To find out eventually how to increase your intelligence.

“Improving our intelligence or creating systems that allow us to think better,” he explains. Do you take risks? “The danger is there, but we have to worry that it is not used nefarious. Nuclear power is more dangerous and the benefits of artificial intelligence are enormously greater, in short, it is a risk to be taken. A smarter world will be a better world than today.”

And the problem of consciousness? Poggio has put it. “Consciousness,” he replies, “has always been on the edge of science. When one of my students began to work on my conscience, I told him: this is too dangerous for your career. But he went on. The problem is a problem that we have to ask ourselves and ask ourselves if one of these systems becomes conscious how do we realize it,? This poses ethical problems. How do you turn it off?”

Today, the Genoese scientist concluded, there are neighbors. We'll have to face him soon.

Read the original article in Italian on the Primocanale.it website using the link below.