The conference entitled took place on Tuesday 25 February 2025 at the Casa dell'Aviatore “The responsible use of Artificial Intelligence in the military: opportunities and vulnerabilities” organised by the “Giulio Douhet” Military Aerospace Study Centre (CESMA) of the Italian Air Force Association with the support of the Italian Air Force.
At the opening, lawyer Emanuela Cerasella, jurist at the Pontifical Athenaeum “Regina Apostolorum” and promoter of the event, framed the theme of the conference by underlining how it is necessary to analyse the ethical issue with respect to the peculiarities of the military world and to make Artificial Intelligence (AI) a human-centric tool.
Below is the speech by Professor Mariarosaria Taddeo of the University of Oxford (UK), who illustrated the opportunities and risks of AI, emphasising how crucial it is, following the definition of ethical principles, for them to be translated into effective ethical and regulatory tools through the interpretation of the principles themselves and the application of appropriate methodologies.
A technical-engineering perspective was instead provided by the subsequent speaker, Engineer Marco Barbina from the “Airborne” Business Area of Leonardo SpA, who, by stressing the difference—sometimes a source of misunderstanding—between robotics and AI, emphasised how the latter is a tool with applications in the defence sector so powerful that it requires a clear regulatory framework which makes accountability unequivocally allocable.
In the subsequent round table, moderated by Air Squad General (ret.) Giovanni Fantuzzi, President of CEMSA, the speakers were: Monsignor Renzo Pegoraro, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy for Life; Professor Lourdes Velázquez, Full Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics at the Panamerican University Mexico and President of the Bioethics Commission of the International Federation of Societies of Philosophy; Dr Elio Calcagno, researcher at the Istituto Affari Internazionali; and Air Squad General (ret.) Fernando Giancotti, former Commander of the Air Squad of the Italian Air Force and President of the Centre for Higher Defence Studies.
During the discussion, significant themes emerged, such as the need to balance AI efficiency requirements with an ethical dimension that does not act as a brake on technological development; at the same time, the ethical aspect must be taken into consideration from the development phase onwards (“ethics by design”, “algoretics”) so that AI remains a tool created with a conscience and firmly in human hands. Of particular importance is also the issue relating to public and private investment, which must be directed towards the development of AI and bridge the gap within the international scenario, whilst preserving the autonomy and cultural peculiarities of individual nations.
Following the concluding summary by lawyer Cerasella, there was the final speech by journalist Paolo Di Giannantonio, veteran RAI correspondent, who placed particular emphasis on the importance of an ethical approach to AI, as it constitutes a powerful dissuasive tool essential for maintaining peace and democracy.
General Fantuzzi illustrated at the end how, in this conference with an interdisciplinary approach, “CESMA wanted to analyse the issue of the integration of AI in the military field from an ethical perspective—meaning the challenge for the programmer, the pilot, the decision-maker, and the head of an armed force in exploiting the positive capabilities of the technology to improve operational capabilities, while doing so in an ethical, controlled, and human-centric way.”
On the sidelines of the event, after a brief welcoming speech, the Chief of Staff of the Italian Air Force, Air Team General Luca Goretti, highlighted the importance of AI in the transformation process of the Italian Air Force, pointing out how it must constitute “a conscious tool in the hands of man, with the aim of producing positive effects”. Gen. Goretti then argued how crucial it is to invest, in an Armed Force in which every innovation must necessarily take the form of the technological state of the art, in a tool such as AI, whose field of application will range from the sixth-generation aircraft to the optimisation of decision-making processes “always leaving man at the centre of the final decision” and to the machine the capacity to process enormous amounts of data with extreme speed. With this in mind “it becomes essential, particularly for the new generations, to implement staff training that enables an AI tool usage that is deeply aware of the consequences and risks, avoiding the abdication of man in favour of the machine”.
