(To make the following text more easily comprehensible, we will begin with the definitions of the two key concepts in the title.Information is any element of news, announcement, declaration, or report that is transmitted. Knowledge is the evolution within the mind of recorded information and experience that yields familiarity, perceptiveness, and understanding of things, granting skill and the ability to guide decision-making.)

Turning to the postwar years, we may recall that information in those days reached the seeker drop by drop. Schools operated with limited capacity for attendance; families, particularly mothers spending most of their time at home, had restricted educational opportunities; radio signals came through only with difficulty; newspapers circulated sparsely and were hard to deliver to semi-urban or rural regions; books were not in high demand; and libraries could be approached only by the most persistent. Such conditions made the pursuit of information almost a dystopian enterprise. Yet, despite all that, when information was finally obtained, it was, for the most part, converted into knowledge—knowledge that found practical and often successful application. That was the general cognitive framework which decisively contributed to making the early postwar decades in our country a time of genuine reconstruction, a prelude to the next stage of development that followed.

In the decades that ensued, year after year, information began to flow more quickly and, soon enough, more indiscriminately—toward everyone, whether they sought it or not. We have now reached a condition, at least since the beginning of this century, of informational inundation: an unfiltered deluge directed in all directions, transmitted so rapidly that it becomes impossible to retain it, and even more to absorb what might be of actual use to anyone. The new means of dissemination—though facilitating access—have at the same time weakened the traditional institutions that once processed, shaped, and transformed information into knowledge. As a result, we observe the declining efficiency of schools, the waning of printed books and newspapers, the absence of parental engagement in education, and the quiet and the reduced visitation of libraries.

The explanation for these results necessarily points to the quantitative imbalance between information and knowledge to which we are all now subjected. The gigantic torrent of information has become the chief obstacle to its own processing within the limited time available in the face of its ceaseless flow. Only a fraction of what we receive is ever transformed into knowledge—and even then, that fragment may prove irrelevant or, worse, harmful. Hence arises the need for limits. We need filters capable of sifting what is offered before it is stored, so that what remains may be measured, judged, and used. Such filters might once have been found in the family, the school, or the appropriate state legislation and its application. But these very institutions have themselves been eroded by the informational flood, their mechanisms operating on frequencies quite different from those that would enable the conversion of filtered information into knowledge.

The sequence of analysis and reasoning up to this point might appear to end in a deadlock. An attempt to transcend it now comes in the form of a new invention: Artificial Intelligence, which seeks to transform information into knowledge automatically and deliver it ready-made. Undeniably, every discovery or invention adds a positive sign to the ledger of knowledge and, under certain conditions, may contribute to improving the quality of human life. Yet those same conditions direct our thoughts toward an analogy with the use of atomic energy: the need for a moral framework universally accepted by human society. The issue with Artificial Intelligence, then, lies in who will manage its applications, under what framework, and to what degree these systems will operate through open and easily accessible codes. Only under such conditions can the related information be transformed into knowledge by those who desire it, while its creators may balance the otherwise cost-free use of the vast amount of data they collect and process from multiple sources. A qualitative upgrading of the institutional entities mentioned earlier—family, school, and state administration—is indispensable, both to anticipate possible side effects and to monitor the terms under which Artificial Intelligence applications are used. Particularly in regions far from large urban centers, such as Mani, where those institutions are weakened by the conditions prevailing there, an increased and conscious effort will be required to approach, in a purified form, the knowledge offered through Artificial Intelligence.

THE EDITORIAL BOARD