There is a reason why the proposal to allocate the Supervision of the field of artificial intelligence at the National Agency for Cybersecurity (Acn) lasted 48 hours before disappearing from the package IT security regulations sought by the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio and presented to the Council of Ministers on Thursday, January 25th. Because there is another candidate in the running for this position who many consider to be more suitable. It is theDigital Italy Agency (Agid), the office created to coordinate the digitalization of public administration, which for months has been the chess piece that the Undersecretary of State for Technological Innovation, Alessio Butti, wants to play. The Como MP, who arrived almost inconspicuously at Palazzo Chigi, is increasingly being listened to by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who wanted to put on her party’s hat on the AI issue.
The fact is that the first attempt to identify by law Which public body should be entrusted with the delicate task of monitoring artificial intelligence has been blocked. A sector controller is appointed This is provided for in the European regulation on artificial intelligence, the AI lawin the last few weeks until the cycle of final approvals by the European Council (February 2, expected date) and the European Parliament (by April).
The backstory:
How to choose the controller
Precisely because the text of the AI law is heading for a vote, the Undersecretary of State of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, Alfredo Mantovano, responsible for the intelligence services, stated in a press conference that the association with the ACN has been deleted in order to avoid leaks to the front. In short, an act of institutional courtesy towards Brussels, but far from necessary. There Spain has designated an authority to oversee AI already last September. And this happened while Madrid held the presidency of the European Council and had the mandate to finalize the agreement reached with Parliament on December 8th on the AI law.
Rather, the forward movement that must be stopped is an internal government matter. And that’s what it’s all aboutArtificial intelligence control system that Butti is working on. The AI law, as shown in the final text Wired As the European Parliament has seen, it does not require a single contact person, as the European Parliament would like, but refers to various mandated national authorities. For example, when analyzing the models used in finance, the ball goes to the relevant supervisory authorities (in Italy it would be Consob). And in the articles about prohibited uses and exceptions it is mentioned that I national guarantors of personal data and the market must submit a report to the Commission every year on the use of real-time biometric recognition systems. In Italy, the task therefore lies with the data protection authority and the cartel office. And again, when talking about the defense of critical infrastructures, it is natural to give in to the ACN, which already oversees them in the field of cybersecurity.
The role of the brothers of Italy
In short, the AI Act creates a table with lots of seats. But it needs a landlord. Someone who sets the times and priorities, coordinates the work and is a point of reference to the outside world. It is difficult to imagine that this task could be delegated to an independent authority, such as the data protection guarantee or the competition and market guarantee. Palazzo Chigi’s vision is that it is too autonomous and free from politics to deal with the matter, write rules and set up test environments (the so-called sandboxes).
