Artificial Intelligence: Science, ethics and new challenges

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already present in many of our everyday activities and is helping us to make more informed decision. Its strength is the ability to derive knowledge from huge amounts of data, and to be able to reason on such knowledge. This allows it to be useful in many application domains and to help us solve difficult problems. However, its pervasive use and it ability to trigger very fast societal transformations also generate some questions on its impact on our lives. AI ethics aims to discuss these questions and to find the best solutions, both technological or not, to mitigate the possible negative consequences of a pervasive use of AI. The current COVID-19 crisis, which is related to health but it is also economical and societal, must be tackled focusing on science and technologies like AI, which however need to be advanced to cope with the challenges of completely new living and working environments. Also, it needs to be handled with responsibility and ethics by those who produce such technologies, those who use them, and also those who regulate them. The whole society needs to understand clearly the capabilities, limitations, and risks of AI, so to identify a trajectory towards a future where human rights and values are supported and the uniqueness of our intelligence is amplified, rather than hampered, by technology. © 2020 Associazione Italiana per l'Informatica e il Calcolo Automatico. All rights reserved.