Before June’s first leaders’ summit, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni intends to convene a special G7 session devoted to artificial intelligence.
Italy, one of the initial European nations to formally prohibit OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a widely used chatbot, will make artificial intelligence (AI) a central theme during its January-December Group of Seven (G7) presidency.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy delivered a press conference on December 4, 2023, wherein she delineated the principal objectives that would guide Italy throughout its G7 presidency of twelve months.
These include providing assistance to African development, aiding Ukraine, and addressing AI-related concerns. Meloni stated regarding the difficulties presented by AI:
“I am hugely concerned about the impact (of AI) on the labor market […] Today we are faced with a revolution where [human] intellect is in danger of being replaced.”
Although the Italian prime minister refrained from providing further details regarding particular apprehensions regarding artificial intelligence, she did declare her intention to convene a dedicated session of G7 members that would center on AI before the inaugural leaders’ summit in June.
The impact of AI on the labor market has been a longstanding concern for the Italian government. The nation allocated 30 million euros ($33 million) to the Fondo per la Repubblica Digitale (FRD) in May 2023 to improve the skills of the unemployed and those whose livelihoods are threatened by AI takeover and automation.
In March 2023, the Italian Data Protection Authority issued an order mandating the immediate restriction of data processing for local users by OpenAI, the American company responsible for ChatGPT. The agency has also identified a need for more legal justification for AI’s mass acquisition and storage of personal data during algorithm training.
The ban was revoked when ChatGPT complied with all requirements one month later. In November, however, the Italian Data Protection Authority declared the commencement of a “fact-finding” inquiry into the utilization of data collection to train artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.
