Artificial Intelligence and Rule of Law: Challenges and Opportunities for Democracies in the Digital Era

On Friday, May 3, 2024, the conference “Artificial Intelligence and the Rule of Law: Challenges and Opportunities for Democracies in the Digital Era” (“Intelligenza Artificiale e Stato di Diritto: Sfide e Opportunità per le Democrazie nell’Era Digitale”) took place at the Sala del Cenacolo of the Chamber of Deputies in Rome (Italy). Organized by the Marco Pannella ETS Foundation, the  event aimed to stimulate critical awareness and facilitate constructive dialogues on AI’s role in shaping our societal future. It served as an interdisciplinary platform, welcoming discussions among academics, researchers, industry experts, policymakers, and journalists.

During the session titled “AI and Information: Decoding the Truth on the Net – What are the challenges and opportunities posed by AI in information management and validation in the post-truth era?” (“IA e Informazione: Decodificare la Verità in Rete – Quali sono le sfide e le opportunità poste dall’IA nella gestione e nella validazione delle informazioni nell’era della post-verità?”), Riccardo Gallotti, the project coordinator of AI4TRUST European project, shared insights on preventing and combating online disinformation, operated through AI4TRUST, highlighting the opportunities and risks of such multi-disciplinary work.

The European AI4TRUST project combines artificial intelligence and expert fact-checkers to counter online disinformation. Funded by the EU with 5.95 million euros, including 1.04 million allocated to FBK, it aims to create a platform that will monitor social media and information sources in real time, analyzing text, audio and video in seven languages. By identifying risky content, it will flag it to fact-checkers for further verification, thus improving the algorithms themselves. SKYTG24 is among the Italian partners.

He was joined by Walter Quattrociocchi, a professor at Rome’s ‘La Sapienza’ University, and Andrea Daniele Signorelli, a freelance journalist and expert in new technologies. The session was skillfully moderated by Giovanna Reanda, a journalist from Radio Radicale.

Our Italian partner SKYTG24 attended the event in person. You can watch a recording of the event here.