First, when I was four years old, I liked machines. I understand machines, not men. When I was 19, I developed a small electronic calculator. This experience led me to SGS Fairchild, where I developed a new technology for making MOS transistors. It truly enabled the enormous progress that has occurred in quantum physics. Everything is connected with everything else; each of us is an integral part of the One. I wanted to understand my personal experiences in terms of quantum physics. We are not replaceable by machines. We are the creators of machines, and we must absolutely become even better than we are. We are here to act, not only to think, but also to love.
Good morning everyone. Let's begin. Thank you for coming today. Today was supposed to be mainly an internal event, but in the end we decided it was too beautiful and too important to do it only internally, so we opened it up to as many people as possible to make everyone a part of it. I'm super happy to welcome back Federico, who was with us here about ten years ago and really filled us with enthusiasm with his speech, because he told us many things that he has since developed further. So it will be much more interesting still. And we all remember it was fantastic, so without going into detail, without explaining too many things, I'll let them be introduced by Professor Guzzago, who is our professor of strategic marketing at Foscari and has been with us from the beginning. He was actually one of the architects at the start of the Digital Academy, so of the first steps we took in the field of training. I'll let him introduce our guest and I'll leave you with him.
I'll do a very brief translation into English, then we'll use Italian. Today we have a very special moment for me. It is very special for the audience because we have with us the father of technology, the one who gave us every day the microchip, the computers, the information technology, the age of things: Federico Faggin. Federico Faggin was born in Vicenza, the man who changed the world with the microprocessor... created Intel... from President Obama... la tecnologia... irriducibile... you have to read this book... talk about... today... understand our future direction... People... Peaxy... important... compass... director of the job... io qui Federico passerei all'italiano...
Federico, I'll switch to Italian and say that essentially you have changed the world quite a bit, because at every moment we are dealing with information technology. You are a physicist, an inventor, an entrepreneur — so you bring many things together. But if I understood correctly, in 1968, through something, you invented the microprocessor there, and the whole world recognizes you as such. And so the fact that in this place, which is the cradle of innovation, you are here means that somehow, imagining your phone ringing a thousand times a day to hear you speak, it might be nice if you give us a little flashback. How does it happen that a man from Vicenza, just a few kilometers from here, manages in 1968 to give a turning point to the world?
Thank you for the introduction. I'm very happy to be here with you. It's a beautiful day, and I'm back after maybe 9 or 10 years since we last saw each other, so for me it's a great pleasure to see all this growth of the E-Hub and to see this incredible rebirth that is happening here, even in the level of education. So, I was born in Vicenza in '41, so I'm a 'Vicentino', as they say in the dialect that distinguishes me, and I went to the industrial schools even though my father was a professor of philosophy and history at the Pigafetta high school. He had translated the Aeneid of Plotinus, had written the history of philosophy textbooks for high schools, and had written about forty volumes. So my father really did not look kindly on the fact that I was going to the industrial schools. But up until I was four years old, I really liked machines. I understand machines, not men. Men, especially little boys, play tricks on you and you can't understand why. Machines obey me, and so machines were my model. I wanted to become an aeronautical technician because in five years I could design airplanes instead of waiting another five years doing engineering, and so I was... and instead I discovered that the specialization in aeronautics had been eliminated, so I had to fall back. I studied radio technology, I learned electronics, and then I joined Olivetti when I was 18 years old, and I had really great luck because a few months later I found myself working on a project that then left me in charge of the project without that being the intention. I developed, when I was 19 years old, a small electronic calculator. I designed 60% of it and built 90% of it. It was a project that had just started, and I had four technicians working for me, all older than me, and so this experience was the peak of my training because it allowed me to understand what I wanted to do in life. I decided I wanted to continue studying because I wanted to understand how transistors work — how they worked and how they work — because the transistor at that time, we're talking about 1961, was still a novelty. They were replacing the thermionic valves that I had studied in school and they really represented the future. And it was precisely this decision to study physics and to understand quantum physics well, because transistors use this physics, that led me to SGS Fairchild in the United States in '68, where I developed a new technology for making MOS transistors using a silicon gate instead of a metal gate. That technology made all the missing pieces for the computer possible: the microprocessor, dynamic RAM memory, non-volatile memories, CCDs — the missing pieces. And with that technology, which then replaced the bipolar technology that at that time represented 95% of the integrated circuits sold in the world, it truly enabled the enormous progress that occurred, in which every couple of years the number of transistors doubled, and so on. The so-called Moore's Law was made possible by the fact that these transistors are surface devices, and therefore the dimensions can be reduced and the performance improved in a predictable way. And so this technology was what allowed me to make the microprocessor, because the microprocessor at that time was an idea that already existed — 'we'll do it in five years, maybe we'll be able to make a microprocessor' — but with this new technology, which was 5 times faster than the previous one, you could put twice the number of transistors, and it had a dissipation current that was a problem that was 100 times less — 100,000 times less than the previous one. It could be done, and so I did it. And my contribution was to do it, because the architecture was trivial, after all it could be done, but it was a question of how to do it. And it required the new technology, and I had it, and so I showed the world how to use the new technology.
In this retrospective story of yours, I find two things interesting. One is this philosophical humus of your father that you mentioned, and which perhaps in some way represented a connection with everything that will later represent and that we will come back to — the 'why of things'. So this is a point that perhaps I throw at you as I listen to you: this humus of philosophy, which today is sometimes relegated by technique elsewhere, but perhaps represents the new frontier. The other thing I find interesting is that you, as a physicist, did not represent the image of the physicist with equations, closed in a laboratory, but you described a productive dimension of thinking with one's hands, of building, of the inventor who gets his hands on things. You said the transistor — there was an idea of what a machine with silicon could be — and with your invention it was built. I see in you someone who puts his hands on things; you removed the cap from what later became seriality, miniaturization, and which we know. Well, these two things I find fascinating in your flashback.
Well yes, I must say that I learned to build model airplanes by buying a book and designing from it, not by buying the assembly kit, but by imagining the model airplane, drawing it instead of listening to the Latin teacher — we're talking about the first and second years of middle school — and then making the plans one by one, buying the material, cutting all the pieces, making the glue. That recipe that was in the book: just dissolve celluloid in acetone, and the celluloid came from my sister's broken dolls and her friends' broken dolls. And so I also learned to gently repair the broken dolls of my sister's friends. This is very beautiful, and so my glue was pink.
You know why it's very beautiful? Because this is also a cradle of teaching with advanced methodologies. For example, even the use of robotics, not as an end in itself, but as a tool for thinking with one's hands. You are describing to us the importance of activating the drive of curiosity, of knowing, of experimenting, but not only in front of a keyboard, but by bringing these two images — the glue and the dolls — which are very powerful, so that there is already a message for people: let's not separate mind from body, but let's unleash our curiosity, our inventiveness, using our body.
Absolutely. And then I didn't choose to study engineering because already with the first project at Olivetti I had perfectly understood — actually at 12 years old I already knew exactly how to make a product: first you imagine it, then you do the design on paper, then you do the real project, and then you make it work. And then you get great satisfaction from doing it. At 12 years old I already understood how a product is made. But above all, I chose the Rossi industrial institute, where you also learn to use your hands. And then I chose physics, I didn't choose engineering, so I chose the more intellectual part of science, because it's the part that starts from the fundamental laws. And then later I took a step forward that I'm sure we'll talk about again, and it brought me closer to my father, who up to that point — philosophy couldn't have interested me less.
Well, this already shows a link. Sometimes there is... We live in a country of oppositions, in an era of polarization, of clashes, for example between humanities and scientific subjects. I believe that you, in a way, already recompose this with your personality, demonstrating that the near future, the present we live in, is not a struggle between branches of knowledge, but a recomposition. And of this we will recover too. And what is interesting in your reasoning is that, dealing with physics and quantum physics, you begin in some way to become aware that the world was constructed — and everything we know, study, do, medicine, was constructed with the laws of classical physics. But quantum physics has illuminated, in a way, a different perspective, namely that according to which information, the things around us, are not as we have been taught. Probably this clicks, I believe, at the moment when you begin to put things back into play instead of saying, 'Well, I invented the microchip, I can also rest easy.' You demonstrate that it's necessary, so to speak, to take a further step.
I would say that an important step for me was becoming an entrepreneur, because being an entrepreneur opened me up to a whole different way of thinking and using the brain in a certain way. Because someone who does physics, someone who does science, solves problems that are... well-formed problems, and so we can have all the answers. But when I have to decide which product to make, the product will be ready in three years, I have to understand what the market will be in five years. Which equation tells me what the market will be in five years? I have to make courageous decisions, I have to take risks. As the boss, I can't blame anyone because I'm the boss, so I have to make the decision myself. Well, I learned what 'the gut' means — that is, courageous action, making decisions without having all the answers.
This is interesting because economic theory, when Schumpeter came along, somewhat overturned the table, saying that it's not in equilibrium, in equilibrium models, that the solution generally lies, but in disequilibrium — that the entrepreneurial subject, looking at something in a different way, with a capacity for combination, intervenes on reality and transforms it. So there is this dimension of the entrepreneurial subject who is not just a discoverer of a hidden law, but is actively the bearer of an impact. And I believe you represent the most striking example of this. So just as we have recovered 'thinking with one's hands', this capacity to put oneself into play and to confront reality — which many sages think means getting one's hands dirty, a second-rate thing — is instead a very noble thing.
Absolutely. And then I developed intuition, because who is it that helps you understand what the market will be in five years? The intuitive aspect of our mind, which science often degrades, saying 'intuition deceives you, don't believe it.' It's outside the rationality of science, and so it's considered something not to be taken into account. Instead, when one has to make decisions for the future, how does one do it? One must have an intuition, to understand things from within.
So if you just now mentioned 'the gut', and if sometimes in business schools perhaps we are loaded with modeling, with case tools, perhaps today we need to recover the fact that our gut, our inner intelligence, what is in some way instinct, is not the antagonist of reason but can be a powerful support in illuminating us, giving us energy. Am I interpreting correctly?
And then later, as you know very well because you've read the book more than once, I had to develop the heart. And so we have three fundamental centers that must be integrated, and to live well we must use all three and harmonize them: the head, which is rationality, inventiveness, creativity, imagination — these aspects that go beyond what machines can do; the heart, which is empathy, the ability to work together, to care for one another, to do things, to collaborate, and so on; and the gut, which is the ability to act with courage, following all the other centers — following intuition, following rationality, and following the heart. So these things are fundamental, and by harmonizing them one lives much better, in tune with oneself, in tune with reality, and above all, lives well — which is what the machine doesn't have.
Right, because the machine — today we talk about it a lot, because we don't just talk about robotics, but we talk about artificial intelligence, and so we're talking about something that is emerging in many debates also as an antagonist, as the enemy, as the danger, as a potential destroyer of our existence. And here, already citing the heart, putting it into play, you are saying that there is something that distinguishes us from the machine, and therefore the machine is something else. So help us understand whether it's really so, and then try to help us read the impact of artificial intelligence, because in everything that is written, the machine has a part of us — an algorithmic part, let's say — but it doesn't have everything that we have, and as such it probably never will. Is that correct?
Yes. We are conscious entities, conscious entities with free will, who control a body that is a structure, a mechanism — but a mechanism that is both quantum and classical. So it has both the unpredictability of quantum physics and the predictability of classical physics. And with this body we control the world — the world of space and time, of macroscopic objects, which obeys the rules of classical physics, which are deterministic. So there is the determinism of classical physics, the indeterminism and determinism of the human body, and the capacity to understand, to know, and to control from an interiority — which is what we have as conscious entities, entities that are quantum, purely quantum. And so these three levels allow us to have a way of understanding and knowing ourselves through the experience we have via the body in a reality — this reality that we think is the only reality, but is instead a reality that is more virtual than real.
Well, let's try then to use this very powerful image to then, in fact, try to delve in and understand more deeply the difference between us and machines today. In perspective, it seems to me that you point out that the arrival of quantum physics, even in its sometimes more pop formulations — Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Schrödinger's cat, these images that are sometimes narrated and suggestive — you are saying that quantum physics seems absurd because we are applying it in the wrong place. We are applying it to read a world, while it is the one that lends itself instead to reading what we have inside us. That is, I believe the key passage that you make is this: we are here, we are three school desks, we reason and we reason about having a physical reality that we touch, then we have a bit of heart, a bit of emotions, fine, and then we have virtual reality, so information, the internet. You say: attention, gentlemen, because perhaps it's the opposite — that reality is a reality that lies elsewhere, and what we perceive as physical is a virtual construction of it. A very powerful overturning of the table, and we have to try to lay it down one step at a time.
Yes. So, according to physics, quantum information is the most fundamental aspect of reality. According to physics, quantum physics derives from quantum information, which until then — until ten years ago, fifteen years ago — was considered the anthology. Instead, no, it derives from quantum information. But quantum information is not itself an ideology, it's an abstract thing, quantum information. So from quantum information to quantum physics, from quantum physics to classical physics, and from classical physics to classical information. So there is a progression in which each reality is vaster than the reality that is contained — like a box, a series of Chinese boxes, one inside the other. And quantum information is fundamental. But quantum information has an extraordinary property: quantum information cannot be copied, cannot be known from outside, cannot be reproduced. So what does physics represent? Quantum information, if it's not knowable for us — information first of all must be knowable, and then for us information represents the meaning we have inside us. We use information, or we use symbols, to communicate the meaning we have inside us. In physics, meaning doesn't exist; only information without meaning exists. Information is simply defined as the logarithm of the probability of an event. That's all — the logarithm of the probability of an event, with no connection to meaning. So in the work I've done over the last five years with Professor D'Ariano — Giacomo Mauro D'Ariano, who holds the chair of theoretical physics at the University of Pavia — and his collaborators, we have developed a very powerful theory. It's called OPT, Operational Probability Theory, which says that quantum physics derives entirely from six postulates, and they are entirely informational — that is, they are postulates of quantum information. So everything else derives from there. So this option of theories — I was looking for someone years ago who had understood that physical reality is made of information, but there's more: there is consciousness and free will, which are even more, further information — that is, they represent the meaning of information. It took me a while to make him understand what I wanted to say, but then he understood, and together we developed this new theory. This new theory says that a quantum system that is in a quantum state — which is quantum information — has the experience of its state; that is, it knows from within the state it is in. So we simply introduced — we reinterpreted what quantum physics says, that quantum information can only be known from within. That's why it's not clonable, that's why it's not reproducible, because it can only be known from within. In fact, the no-cloning theorem can be interpreted as the fact that quantum information is private — it's private, exactly as our experience inside us is private. This simple connection links spirituality and physics and science, because it makes it clear that there is a world of interiority, the world of our experience, which can only be represented by quantum information but not described. Because what does description mean? Description means that one explains something. No — the description, that is, the understanding of the experience, is only inside us; it's a property of consciousness. So consciousness is even more fundamental than matter, and even more fundamental than symbols. Indeed, symbols are the other aspect of reality that we call matter, and they become mediators of a communication.
Exactly. And they are, from this point of view, also those with which machines are in some way tamed to work — these algorithms, these symbols. The moment we give an input to GPT rather than Midjourney, aren't we putting them to work on symbols? But the machine won't have the capacity to know, to be so intelligent as to know what we know.
It's simply a symbolic construction, and it's only symbolic, made of incoherent matter that supports classical, shareable information — which are bits. Bits can be copied; computer bits are copyable, they don't have the property of quantum information of being non-copyable, non-reproducible. Bits are what are also necessary for us to communicate our experience to others like us, to understand ourselves through communication.
And here there is a further leap, because there is the idea that we are integral parts of the One, where the One is the totality of all that exists. But then why does this represent another leap that can also be a dizziness, a precipice? It's a bit of reasoning that also in cinematography, in novels — the idea that our consciousness is an epiphenomenon, an emergent property. Does there exist a blind watchmaker, as they say, that nature evolved in a certain way, life was born, cells, chemistry, and at a certain point our ancestors, even unicellular ones, we became machines — sometimes they say more sophisticated — and at a certain point, so to speak, consciousness arrived. If you will, we grew up a bit like that; they explained consciousness to us a bit, beyond strictly religious visions. And you say: watch out, because this story isn't exactly like that — that is, consciousness didn't arrive at the end of a very long process, but probably the opposite. Perhaps this passage can help us then arrive at being integral parts of the One.
Well then, quantum physics — because I start from two fundamental points of view that are a bit new. One isn't new: that quantum physics, being founded on quantum information — quantum physics is the foundation of reality — the properties of this quantum physics must also explain the rest, which instead has never been done. The other thing is that I also started from extraordinary personal experiences of consciousness, because I wanted to understand where consciousness comes from. And so I triangulated, in a sense, where I wanted to understand my personal experiences in terms of quantum physics, because it's the only physics that has characteristics similar to those of the extraordinary experiences of consciousness that I've had. So quantum physics, quantum information says that reality is holistic. What does that mean? That reality is holistic means it's not made of separable parts. Classical physics says reality is made of separable parts — that reductionism of physics: the chair is separable from my body, this microphone is separable from me, and so on. In quantum physics there isn't — everything is connected with everything. Everything is connected with everything else. So if everything is connected with everything else, it means there are no separable parts. And so I called this entity the One, the One which is everything that exists, which must be a whole — it can't be made of separable parts. So how can we exist if we consider ourselves separable from the One? And then the concept here is: each of us is an integral part of the One. What does 'integral part of the One' mean? I'll give an example. What does it mean? My body is made of 50 trillion cells. These cells were created from a fertilized egg that had a genome, and this genome is copied into each of the cells I'm made of. So each of my cells is an integral part of my body, because it contains the genome of the entire organism — not of the cell, of the entire organism. And in fact, a cell, after it's born, can express parts of itself that weren't expressed at its birth — they were parts of itself that were expressible, because it contains the whole genome of the whole. So a part of the genome can express something new in that cell, and so the cell is something that grows, that potentially knows the whole. That's why it's an integral part.
So here there are, I believe, a couple of important passages. The first is that you help us distinguish man from machine for today and tomorrow. The machine is a system of separable parts, and in a way the computer is made of transistors. Transistors are structures whose functionality is simply a switch — open, closed, open or closed, that's it; they only do that function. So what does the transistor know about the whole? Nothing, nothing — it knows nothing. Can the transistor change its function during its life? No — if it changed its function, the computer would no longer work. Whereas our parts are integral parts that can even change their function and compensate, for example, other parts of the body when necessary. So there is this holistic dimension — a part in the whole. I found very fascinating in your book 'Irreducible' — which rightly must be read more than once, because sometimes in books citations of certain authors, certain thinkers, certain mystics, certain novelists are included, and sometimes it's done a bit for stylistic effect. I found instead in your work citations that are exactly like a literary translation of a vision of a mystic of what you are saying. For example, when you cite Rumi: 'You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in a drop.' This is very powerful, because we — well, the part-whole concept, as you said, every cell contains the entire blueprint. So our infinitesimal... in truth these trillions of cells, there is a part of the whole, and I would dare say that by analogy it also applies to us with respect to the whole world, if we can transpose this reasoning, just as the cell with respect to our body applies to us with respect to the rest, then with respect to the whole. This is powerful for rethinking our relationship with connections, with interactions, with other people, with the realities around us. It's quite powerful.
But if we don't rethink who we are, if we don't rethink who we are today in the face of an artificial intelligence that is catching up with us in a way, our future won't be good. We have to understand that we are much more than machines, because science today has told us that we are machines — not only, but machines... medicine has told us that too.
No, absolutely. Can I read your sentence? 'We are not biological robots, but spiritual beings in a physical body.' And this is where you turn the table, right?
Exactly. So, apart from the fact that we are the ones who created computers, we are the ones who created artificial intelligence, we gave artificial intelligence our knowledge. And the only reason artificial intelligence is more powerful than us in certain things is only because it's faster and can deal with memories much vaster than our brain can deal with — because it's an algorithm that searches for correlations between data, that can operate on data fields that are trillions of bytes. What does that mean? At that point, at most we could operate on thousands of data, but conceptually it is we who gave the blueprint to the computer so that it could...
Do things faster on more data — things that we conceptually invented. So we are the creators, but at a certain point we flip the story in part because it suits those who make these machines: they want to sell them, they want to make us believe that we can be surpassed by machines. And we are living a very dangerous moment if we believe this narrative that is told to us every day, which makes us think that we can be surpassed by machines. We are not surpassed by machines. We are the creators of machines, and we absolutely must become even better than we are, because if we believe we are machines, many of us believe we do exactly what machines do: we repeat what we read in the book instead of understanding what we read first.
We go to school and they tell us to repeat what is written in the book. Instead, we must understand what is written in the book and take the next step, and that is how we will manage to control artificial intelligence, using it for the common good instead of using it against us. And so there is the great theme of why the machine, as you have shown us, has no self-awareness: because it is an algorithmic part that tries to replicate our classical intelligence rather than the quantum one, the rules of classical physics — it is a deterministic system, whereas we are quantum, in the sense that we have free will, so we can make decisions that are not algorithmic, and we have consciousness. And consciousness brings with it understanding — understanding of information; the meaning of information comes from consciousness, and that too is a non-algorithmic property of reality.
So here, when you talk to us about parts of the whole, being part of the One, it is inevitable to go, let's say, in a tangential or overlapping key also with all the reasoning that has a purely spiritual, religious dimension, and so on. So we are in the presence of reasoning that brings science, in its matrix of quantum physics, closer to spirituality. This is a very interesting theme because then it connects us to why machines will not be able to reason about 'why'. And it is when you also introduce a very challenging concept, that of these selves. Here is the image you give: we are like a drone commanded by a pilot — our body, a bit the life we perceive as such at this moment, this dialogue that I already cherish in my love, in my heart, even in perspective — is like guided by a Self, that is, the drone guided by a pilot. Our life is guided by a Self. In short, we need to dedicate some time to try to digest this challenge you pose to us.
That is, we are a quantum field — a quantum field that has consciousness, that has free will, and has identity, that is, the capacity to understand and know that the experience it is having is our experience. I know that the experience I am having is my experience, and therefore I can control it with free will. So free will is simply the capacity we have to choose the information we observe. Because right now, for me, you are information — from a physical point of view, you are information. I look there, so I choose where to look, I take that information and I transform it inside me into meaning.
And then I take the reverse step: I take a portion of my meaning, because the whole meaning is not reproducible — I alone can know my meaning — so I take a portion of my meaning and I transform it into symbols and put it into this information field. So these cycles of transformation from information to meaning and from meaning to information are the cycles through which we know ourselves, communicating with one another. And this puts even more under the spotlight the value of our relationships, our interactions, how we relate to investigating or understanding things others have studied, and at the same time sparking our curiosity toward our own instincts.
So it seems to me that your reasoning is systematizing the fact that, as John said, no man is an island — it actually demonstrates that his life, and also his productive life, his educational life, his emotional life, his exploratory life, is created by interaction: interaction is creation. This thirst for knowledge, which is the instrument of creation, is the essence itself, not something accessory. Knowing — this intention, it seems to me you say — is one of the founding bricks, and of knowing an open phenomenon, in the sense that the more we know, the more we want to know, and the more the future is unpredictable.
Because having free will, there is no formula that says what one will do, and one does it to understand, to know oneself. And so reality, the universe, is open — it has not been written in the Book of Nature, but we write it. Scientists today tell us that in, I don't know, 50 billion years the universe becomes nothing, matter separates from other matter. But these things are based on laws, on rules that hold so far for what we know. But in the last 50 years we have discovered that there is dark matter and dark energy, which represent 95% of everything that exists, when 100 years ago we thought that everything that exists is normal matter, which represents less than 5%.
So already this says: how can we claim to know everything? And besides, quantum physics already tells us in a different and open way that there is becoming in the universe, and therefore it is impossible to predict what will happen.
But let me ask you: here we have students, we have entrepreneurs, we have managers, we have figures of very different professions. Can we say — it often comes to mind, also when we listen to people who have done important things, and you have done them on an even more important scale — often the theme of curiosity comes up: 'be curious, use curiosity as a drive.' Could we think that curiosity is like a muscle that we should nurture and train, because it is probably what allows us to do our work in this world, with all the advantages that follow? Is it a gamble to say this?
Curiosity is simply — as I see it — that aspect which tells us that we want to understand, to know. We are never satisfied with knowing enough. That is curiosity. And at a deeper level, what is it that we want to know? We want to know who we are. And One, in my view, wants to know itself, and we are emanations of One that help One; we are parts of the whole of One, with which One knows itself. We are integral with One — that is, we are not separate from One; we are a part of the whole of One, not separate from One, with which One knows itself.
Yes, because for example a popular version of some simulation theory about our existence — correct me if I'm wrong — says roughly that we could be a kind of video game of other beings, a somewhat dystopian vision of reality. What you say is that this production, in a way, of relations that are built is actually not to satisfy a God, a set of capricious gods who want to see gladiators in the arena, but rather, wanting to know themselves, they need us as agents so that each of us can, in our own life, in our own exploration, help the great One. Is that so?
Yes, well, it's not helping another, because the other is us. So at a fundamental level we are not separable, and precisely for that reason cooperation must be the fundamental idea of how we should behave: we must cooperate with one another, not compete with one another. And one of the problems today is that science tells us that the mantra of evolution is the survival of the fittest. Fifty years ago it was said the strongest; now it's politically correct to change 'strong' to 'fittest' because it's less cruel. But in reality 'survival' means life and death — it means the game: the one who is not fit dies and the one who has adapted lives. We don't die — the body dies, but who we are does not die.
Perhaps it's because the framing, the representation of the problem, is of a zero-sum game, when in fact it isn't. And this is the exact point: perhaps it becomes a competitive game where the fittest survives because it is conceived as a zero-sum game, whereas reality, being generative, intentional, unpredictable, must place us in a position of openness toward a possibility — like when we control a drone, and when the drone is shot down by the enemy, because the drone is always something that goes out to someone else in this popular image. But when the drone no longer exists — we who a moment before were captured by what the drone was doing, because we had to run away or defend ourselves, and so we saw only what the drone comprised and gave us information — once the drone is gone, ah, I am also here. So we realize we are something more.
We are a bit like that: our consciousness, which believes it is the body, pays attention only to the signals produced by the body, identifies with the body. That part of consciousness is what psychologists call the Ego — the part of us that believes it is the body. But that is a small part of who we are. It's like a child playing at the computer who identifies with the character in the game and no longer thinks about dinner, no longer thinks about what's around. But if the mother turns off the television, he realizes...
You keep reminding us that we know ourselves little. It's as if we could have a bit of Freud, a bit of Jung here. But essentially, if we know only certain parts, we end up hostage to them, and we end up adopting behaviors that are also selfish in industry, in society, in school — these zero-sum games. There is a passage where you talk about intelligence. I have always found it fascinating when a scholar like Gardner sensitized us to the fact that we grow up with the idea that there is a single type of intelligence, often the logical-reductive one, the IQ — but then there are many: there is aesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, emotional intelligence. And you say a young person truly... intelligence is intuition, creativity, vision. And one says 'ok', then you say 'and wisdom', then 'empathy', you say 'ethics and love' — even that. So these two words make me wonder whether we are glimpsing again this dimension of our relationship with machines, that is, this idea of artificial intelligence that we sometimes see as competitive or substitutive. It isn't. Here is the question I pose to you: perhaps this intelligence at our service could help us both to take apart and reassemble some of the work we do, but also to open up completely new fronts of understanding reality, of building new and amplified experiences — and therefore not so much a substitute but a great amplifier that we could use. That is the question I pose to you.
Absolutely. I consider artificial intelligence a human achievement of incredible power, but I see a critical moment today in how it will be used. For example, if one takes a video of what I'm saying — two minutes are enough — and from this video one can create an image of me saying what others want me to say, perfectly identical to me, with the words I will say later, the mouth moves exactly as I will move it, and so they can create a fake that within two days the whole world will have seen. So today a single person can create a fake that goes around the whole world and can then become a kind of virus that infects the world. This power man has never had before.
At the same time, this technology can help us learn much faster, reducing the time required for mundane work, which includes, for example, I use Google's translator every day. I need to translate from Italian to English. But I point out that it works for me because I know both English and Italian — because if I knew only English and translated into Italian, the translation would say a lot of nonsense, including the opposite of what I said in English. So I need to know both languages, and this is the classic example of how artificial intelligence must be used: to know more than the artificial intelligence does.
I believe the example you just gave is beautiful, because then there is no substitutive dimension but an assistance dimension: it is solving, speeding up certain processes, but it requires my intervention, with greater depth in knowledge. We, so to speak, must grow in order to use artificial intelligence effectively.
And so it empowers us, because in the same unit of time we can do four times the work we did before — and I'm not exaggerating, because for example when I translate, most of the time the machine writes what I have in mind in the translation, and that part is done by the computer in one go. But then I have to reread, understand, correct the things that aren't right, and so on. So artificial intelligence is an incredible amplifier of our mental capacities. But the problem is that since we, emotionally, in our way of acting, are competitive, we do all sorts of things — then the capacity to create problems is very high with artificial intelligence, and we must be careful how we apply it, and there must be laws that protect the majority of us who use it well.
Federico, I wanted to ask you two things, so as to reserve the last half hour for questions from the public, because otherwise my ego is running away with me. But we had planned a conversation with Corica, and I would ask you two specific things, and then we open up the possibility to interact. One concerns this thing you just said — the translator example is very effective: I use it, but I use it well if I know how to navigate; I use it well if I know how to move without it, because otherwise it can take me to other countries. Can one trust it? Exactly. This responsibility of having to know more, toward a world that often struggles a bit, because the world moves, enriches itself with information, with history, with depth — so we all have to keep going with an effort of attention, commitment, and knowledge that is very important. You have shown curiosity, energy, and an important capacity. So my question is: can we make it, as a world, as human beings? Or is this capacity to manage an amplifier and increase depth reserved for a chosen few? This is a question I ask you because it raises a doubt for me about possible asymmetries in society, or a vision that must engage everyone a bit in this direction.
We have no choice. Well, we must do it — we have no choice. It's pointless to say 'you'll do something else'. No, we have no choice. We must be responsible; we must take our responsibility, and it is fundamental. And our responsibility includes doing much more than we have done in the past. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. Otherwise we will really put ourselves in a condition of powerlessness. Instead, we must take hold of the capacity we have, which is enormous, develop it, and use it for the good of all.
So if I understood correctly, this will also require being more inclusive and stimulating the curiosity and capacity of many who are not allowed to work together, because it is very difficult, especially for Italians. And then the last question, before opening to the public, was this: in the end you say essentially that we must bring science and spirituality back together. In truth, it's not that you decide to demonstrate it — because in your reasoning you are making scientific arguments, entering a field that is typically reserved for a spiritual perimeter. You are bringing them to cross, and that is why I find your book extremely powerful — it's a bit like a work of art, it shifts you. Well, the book is much more than a work of art, but it shifts the way you look at reality. So my question is: don't you think that, in effect, also as homework for those listening, a work of construction — of mediation, of tearing down fences, of building bridges of connection, of reasoning, of work — between these two worlds that have often drifted apart, would be a very flourishing and important work agenda for the times ahead?
For me, science tells us that we are only head. It never speaks of heart, it never speaks of gut. Science never speaks of courageous action — it speaks only of head, of rationality. And rationality is fundamental, and so science has done enormous things with rationality: it has shown us how rationality allows us to arrive at conclusions we would never have thought of before. But it cannot eliminate the heart, and it cannot eliminate the gut, courage, courageous action. We are here to act, not only to think, but also to love. And so we must absolutely join what spirituality — which speaks above all of the heart, of empathy, of these things — with the head, and also with action. And of action, very few speak. I say there are three centers that must become one, and only then do we become spiritual beings, because spirituality is the harmony of these three centers in a coherence that is extremely powerful and allows us to become who we are. We are spiritual beings.
Well, here too there is one of the good homework assignments, beyond what is said in the book. Alright, then I would say we reserve this last part to gather some questions from you. So I know that Riccardo, who founded this very brief venture, certainly cares, but maybe you care too. So I'm looking at who would like to address a question to Federico, because it's a rare opportunity.
Good morning everyone. I'm Nicolò Andreola, the scientific director of the master's in gender. What a pleasure and an honor to have you here. Thank you very much for your time. Many of us are trying to build a community of innovators or people interested in innovation; many other hubs and farms are trying to do it in Bari or in southern Italy. You are the man who invented Silicon Valley — or without you it wouldn't have been the same valley. What advice can you give us to try to move communities of people to places that are not metropolises or very close to them?
In my opinion, you are already doing it here. You are not part of the Silicon Valley. What I saw today — this Age Farm initiative of teaching children in a new way, making them understand, using their hands — in my opinion it's extremely powerful, and it's done this way. In fact, I've never seen anything like it in Silicon Valley. So what does it mean? It means that you yourselves see here a reality that, in my opinion, is how it should be done: you start teaching children to use all three of these centers, and to use them well, and to work together — to act, to do things, to build them, and to think. You couldn't have taught Nicolò better than that.
