This book is a compendium of history, social science, philosophy and observation of human development, the human condition and behaviour with so much to cause constant deliberation of human interactions with technology and machines. Human intelligence is a natural phenomenon, and it is general and creative. Artificial intelligence is a contrivance, a technology we designed to perform specific tasks. It is up to us to decide how to relate to it. We must couple artificial intelligence with augmented human intelligence to avoid falling back into slavery by machines, as happened in part during the Industrial Revolution. In these pages, Piero Formica powerfully brings to the surface the strength and autonomy of human thought, capable of seeing beyond the hedge “which the gaze excludes from so much of the ultimate horizon” described by Giacomo Leopardi in his poem The Infinite. We must ensure that AI is not the hedge, the impediment that excludes humans from thinking and wandering with imagination.

The author

Piero Formica, professor of Knowledge Economy, is a Senior Research Fellow and Thought Leader of the Innovation Value Institute of Maynooth University, Ireland. For his contribution to modern innovation policy, he received the 2017 Innovation Luminary Award from the Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group under the aegis of the European Union and the 2023 Magister Peloritanus Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the Accademia Peloritana dei Pericolanti of the University of Messina, Italy. His most recent books are Ideators: Their Words and Voices, One Health and Sciencepreneurship (Emerald Group Publishing, United Kingdom, 2022-2023).