REFLECTIONS ON A HIGHLY CURRENT ISSUE. WE SPEAK ABOUT IT WITH VITTORIO BOERO, PIAGGIO GROUP CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER (CIO)
A deep dive on the tech behind Piaggio Fast Forward's gita® robots.
PFF official video:
March (G.T.) – Sometimes balanced between risk and opportunity, Artificial Intelligence (AI for short) has by now become a confirmed reality. In its infancy (conference at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, 1956, when American mathematician John McCarthy coined the definition) the discipline was debated primarily among scientists and philosophers, including the ethical aspects which were already becoming apparent. Today, the media reports increasingly on AI every day, on discoveries and news that impact ways of communication, treatments, studying, working, travelling, and so on.
THE PIVOTAL YEAR OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
“Generative AI can today be considered the last great achievement of Artificial Intelligence. Although even for professionals this area of AI is nothing new, 2023 will remain in history as the year that marked the border between two era, the previous one and that of Gen Ai’s commercial exploit… 2023 was precisely the year of the real change induced was understood, from multiple perspectives…”
Source, Digital Innovation Observatory FB: www.facebook.com/osservatoridigitalinnovation
Instagram reel by Carlo Negri, senior researcher:
www.instagram.com/p/C3IUrDTtbuF
Ten years ago, in 2014, the renowned Stephen Hawking (British cosmologist, physicist, astrophysicist, mathematician, and scientific populariser, Oxford 1942-Cambridge 2018) warned about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence, which he considered to be a threat to human survival. In a decade, AI has taken great, seemingly unstoppable, steps in development, establishing itself in a vast variety of sectors of human activities. In any case, Hawking’s warning is not outdated. Repeated security alarms lead governments and institutions to hasten to define defence strategies and legal framework on AI.
European Commission, the EU’s approach to artificial intelligence:
digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/it/policies/european-approach-artificial-intelligence
UN-United Nations, expert committee “AI Advisory Body”, Interim Report “Governing AI for Humanity”: www.un.org/en/ai-advisory-body
Source of images and info, left: www.un.org/en/ai-advisory-body;
right: www.instagram.com/osservatoridigitalinnovation
IN COMPANIES PRAGMATISM AND FOCUS ON THE COST/BENEFITS RATIO. Companies have been working for some time now on exploring the possibilities offered by Artificial Intelligence and, according to the most recent surveys, the number of companies, including SMEs, which use AI solutions is in constant and sustained growth (in double digits). We asked Vittorio Boero, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Piaggio Group, what the current status is. “From 2023, we began developing an operational plan in the R&D area of the two-wheeled vehicle sector with the specialised company Neural Concept. There is a wide variety of fields of application: Product Design, Product development, Digital marketing, Text Analytics and others.”
Source of slides: Neural Concept (www.neuralconcept.com)
“Basically,” Vittorio Boero continues, “we began pragmatically from a case of use produced in collaboration (and stimulated by our engineer Riccardo Testi, Calculation System Manager/2W R&D Department) for which we see benefits in terms of time to market (potential reduction in the development time of some vehicle components) and cost saving (reduction of development process costs). Currently, and from the beginning of 2024, we are in a benchmark phase to assess what the market offers (in other words, the proposals, in terms of digital processes and instruments, of the most important companies in the sector) to have an in-depth understanding of the actual opportunities and the potential fields of application, as well as, obviously, the relative benefits in terms of cost. Also to certify the quality of the technological solutions and verify that they are not ‘one shot’ phenomenon, such as what happened with the METAVERSE which turned out to be, in short, aimed at niche processes.”
CALIBRATED CHOICES AND CULTURAL EVOLUTION
“It’s a question of time,” Vittorio Boero adds, “time needed, in fact, to make well calibrated and effective choices, and also to allow the cultural approach of people to evolve, both within the company and in the network of partners we collaborate with. The change, based on how much we are reaping, could hold substantial positive results. Clearly, an accompaniment of cultural ‘change’ in the company will be a necessary condition to allow the technological evolutions to provide concrete benefits to the Piaggio Group.”
“In any case, the trend appears to be clear and aimed at suggesting that we will not be turning back from Artificial Intelligence. So, AI should be studied in depth to then be used to obtain benefits in the corporate processes,” he concludes.
Staying on the R&D subject, there is talk specifically of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI): what is this? “In short, Gen AI allows, starting from specific requests. content and software to be generated (and also text, images, video). In fact, we are exploring the possible application of Gen AI in a variety of corporate processes, always starting from the core of our company, namely connected with the research and development processes specific to the automotive sector, which could speed up and optimise the product development process, as shown in this chart.”
(Source: AI for R&D and Quality, Piaggio Group and Accenture Meeting, March 2024).
FOR MORE INFORMATION. Milan Polytechnic Artificial Intelligence Observatory:
www.osservatori.net/it/ricerche/osservatori-attivi/artificial-intelligence
Artificial Intelligence, the meaning and applications of AI, curated by the Milan Polytechnic Artificial Intelligence Observatory:
blog.osservatori.net/it_it/intelligenza-artificiale-funzionamento-applicazioni
The article by Carlo Negri, Senior Researcher. “How Generative AI works: meaning and applications”:
blog.osservatori.net/it_it/come-funziona-ai-generativa-significato-applicazioni
WORTH KNOWING: THE STATE OF THE ART IN CYBERSECURITY AND DATA PROTECTION.
Here is the press release:
www.osservatori.net/it/ricerche/comunicati-stampa/cybersecurity-italia-mercato-crescita
WIDE REWIND – ALSO READ THE PREVIOUS ARTICLE:
wide.piaggiogroup.com/en/articles/innovation/innovation-in-cyber-security-how-companies-defend-themselves-against-cyber-attacks
