How can AI help us? Tecnologia e destino: dalla metafisica alla rivoluzione digitale

The essay discusses the theoretical aspect of the relationship between natural intelligence and AI. The former, embedded in a body, capable of empathy, feelings, emotions, subject to opaque and obscure determinations due to sensitivity, is subordinate to artificial intelligence, which instead can vastly exceed human capabilities. On the other hand, human beings, however much they may perceive their own inadequacy compared to automata – unlike tools potentially designed to last indefinitely – can decide, and program, their own death. After discussing philosophical positions concerning artificial intelligence, the focus shifts to the debate between those who mark the difference between the two intelligences through an ad hoc faculty, understanding, and those who, like Ferraris, counter that this difference does not reveal the qualitative diversity between natural intelligence and artificial intelligence. Rather, the dissonance lies primarily not on the level of understanding, but on that of purpose, and therefore on reason as the capacity to manifest aims, to have final causes, to confer meanings. The conclusion considers the relationship between natural intelligence and AI from the intersection of critical theory, digital studies and philosophy of mind