Lorenzo Perilli: Generative Artificial Intelligence. How have we come so far?

Lorenzo Perilli, Director of the Department of Literature, Philosophy and Art History at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, is a philologist and historian of ancient scientific thought. He is the director of the Interdisciplinary Study Centre on Classics, Mathematics, and Philosophy “Forms of Knowledge in the Ancient World” and has been involved for many years in the study of the digital environment. His first book on the subject of Computational Philology published by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, dates back to 1995. He is the director of the journals ‘Technai: An international journal for ancient science and technology’ and ‘Science and technology for cultural heritage’.

Italian Publishing House Il Saggiatore in 2025 published his book, Coscienza artificiale. Come le macchine pensano e trasformano l’esperienza umana (Artificial Consciousness. How Machines Think and Transform the Human Experience) where he discusses the problems that machines equipped with intelligence and deep learning capabilities pose us – problems of psychological adaptation, feelings of inadequacy, new ethical challenges, a new type of human-machine relationship, and technical-scientific issues such as the difficulty in understanding the deep mechanism and functioning of these machines.

Nineteenth-century terrors expressed in literature return: Frankenstein, robot rebellion?

We asked Lorenzo Perilli several questions on these issues. For some of them, we know there is no answer; what matters, however, is to be able to ask them.

You can find the article here Lorenzo Perilli’s  article  Lorenzo Perilli – articolo_Scuola di robotica_English