Settimo Termini

The themes proposed by the Journal for a critical discussion are crucial for understanding the impact that AI can have in Society (and also in everyday life), as is the case with all “science-based” cutting-edge technologies, i.e. those founded on and closely intertwined with basic frontier research. The questions posed can, in my view, be more satisfactorily addressed if seen from a long-term perspective with a historical reference to the origins and development of AI, its progress over the last few decades, the fluctuating consideration of it by both public opinion and the scientific community, its relations with other fields of research, in particular Cybernetics, whose heir it can in many respects be considered to be from the point of view of the sociology of science. This is the perspective from which useful paths can be indicated to clarify and deepen the themes posed even if no definitive answers can, presently, be given. The unusual reference to books such as those by Ishiguro and Faggin is intended to indicate the profound complexity and intricacies of the questions posed by AI.

The present paper describes and discusses certain aspects of the evolution of cybernetics, with a focus on the Italian context. It considers the ways in which cybernetic questions relate to present issues of crucial importance. The aim will be to interpret cybernetics as an unfinished and interdisciplinary scientific paradigm, reflecting on the contribution represented by this specificity. Reference will be made to the figure of the Italian cyberneticist Eduardo Caianiello as a paradigmatic case.

A number of reasons, both historical and philosophical, has caused Technology and Human Sciences to be perceived as disjoint domains. Contrary to this claim, we propose as a thesis that there exists a strong methodological affinity between these apparently disconnected fields of knowledge. Our view is further corroborated by the emergence, in the setting of Information Sciences of new scientific concepts and tools such as fuzziness. Comparing the ways in which both technology and literature offer a “model of reality” we shall see that their approach is mainly descriptive, in opposition to the Hard Science’s approach that is markedly Galileian and proceeds by making bold hypotheses, not necessarily linked to the surface description of reality. Moreover, we will discuss the fact that, surprisingly, fuzzy logic can be applied in a very similar way in both Technology and Human Sciences – while its eventual embodiment in Hard Sciences is of a very different nature.