The OPTIC Network (OPTIC) and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome announce a partnership to promote the common goal of advancing technology for humanity. Their Memorandum of Understanding, signed on March 18, 2022, opens the doors for collaboration and participation in activities of the respective institutions.

Selected as one of the 25 experts of the new Global partnership on AI Working group, Vincent C. Müller is Professor of Ethics of Technology at the University of Eindhoven, University Academic Fellow at the University of Leeds and Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute. Specialized on the ethics of disruptive technologies, he has just published the article “Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and is very well positioned to help us navigate the sometime confusing dynamic field of AI ethics and explain the crucial issues we must now address: opacity, the use of data and surveillance. He is now writing a book, “Can Machines Think? Fundamental Questions of Artificial Intelligence” which will be published next year by Oxford University Press, New York.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted a two-fold observation: on the one hand, our technological lead did not prevent us from being hit hard by the scourge. On the other hand, political decision-makers, business leaders and citizens spontaneously turned to technology to find solutions to the crisis. Salvage reflex or solutionism?