Mattarella on AI: "States recover lost authority"

An appeal and a warning: national states and supranational bodies recover the authority lost compared to those private entities holders of immense financial and technological power. In front of a delegation from the World Jurist Association and the World Law Foundation, organizations committed globally to the promotion and defense of Rule of lawthe President of the Republic returns to launch his warning against the use ofartificial intelligence. It does so a few days after the alarm of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who resigned, denouncing on social media that artificial intelligence systems could “kill us all by the end of the decade”, an alarm that led the leaders of Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX to ask to slow down in the development of these systems.

The head of state has always been an attentive and concerned observer of artificial intelligence models and has never failed to underline the risks, along with the opportunities. Risks especially inherent to individual rights and freedoms, which are intertwined with those deriving from bloody conflicts and the progressive delegitimization of international courts: the field in which the World Jurist Association and the World Law Foundation, received today at the Quirinale, are engaged. “It should be remembered that the development of digital technologies and artificial intelligence on the one hand opens up extraordinary opportunities and, at the same time, requires that innovation always remains anchored to respect for the dignity of the personof freedom, of fundamental rights”, were the words of Mattarella.

Law as a limit to power

But this, adds the president, “challenges the responsibility of States and supranational bodies, with the need to restore their lost authority with respect to private entities of immense financial and technological power outside of any rules and objectives of general interest”. It is the States that have “the responsibility and duty to hand over the future into the hands of the young generations. Of the new generations and not to machinery that can take it away from them”. A responsibility that derives from law, adds Mattarella. In fact, it is the right, not technological and economic power, that must “represent the foundation of the exercise of power and, at the same time, draw the limit and measure”.

The lesson of totalitarianism

Boundaries drawn on the democratic constitutional papers born from the ashes of the great conflicts of the twentieth century: “The experience of the totalitarianism of the twentieth century has shown, with dramatic evidence, that formal legality alone is not sufficient to guarantee the rule of law. From that tragic historical lesson the awareness has developed that the inviolable rights of the person and the fundamental principles of the legal system cannot be subordinated to the contingencies of political decision, since they constitute an expression of human dignity”.

So, it’s there Constitution which rises above politics and its daily dynamics. An example of this is the Italian Constitution which “born from the common work of bearers of different political cultures, has gone through decades of profound transformations in society and in the context of life, still confirming its strength and relevance today”.

International courts under attack

The role of democratic constitutions and the courts that defend their principles, however, is called into question by “armed conflicts that undermine the future of humanity, violating respect for the institutions established to safeguard peace and international law”, underlines Mattarella again: “The latter, in turn, faced with unprecedented attempts to delegitimize International Courts and their Judges. The very trust of citizens in institutions is sometimes put to the test by corruption, illicit trafficking, organized crime. Enemies who, increasingly taking on a transnational dimension, require a collective response capable of re-establishing the essential respect for the law”.