For two millennia, citizens of Rome have called their town la Città Eterna, old capital of the Imperium sine fine, as the poet Virgil dubbed the Roman Empire, a grand transcontinental polity forged under a common tongue - Latin. From the Eternal City, Cambridge University researcher Claudia Schettini steers us on day three of The Yuan’s voyage of the discovery of intelligence, arguing AI may well outwit us and found an ‘empire without end,’ but it and humans will still have little to talk about.

Using AI to prevent crimes before they occur was until recently the stuff of sci-fi. It is now reality, however, but stirs up controversy galore over biased AI models that prompt wrongful arrests. Efforts are thus underway to make gumshoe AI more accurate, as Cambridge University researcher Claudia Schettini reveals.

Some researchers suggest so-called ‘electronic persons’ will surpass humans in intelligence by 2050, potentially rendering humans obsolete.This scenario prompts a needed discussion on whether a universal standard of rights and obligations must be devised for robots and artificially intelligent persons. This article will focus on the current legal approach proposed by the EU.

Emotional AI has received a great deal of both interest and scrutiny, from its applications in shaping public opinion, enforcing airport security, and even predictive policing to prevent crimes before they happen. The ethical concerns that arise from this mean the world must change how it views emotional AI, update the legal framework governing its use, and treat it just as it would other sensitive personal data and privacy rights.

The EU has toiled in recent years to come up with a comprehensive framework to manage and regulate AI, while also promoting innovation and fostering trust and transparency, efforts bound to reverberate hugely not just in the bloc but in the whole world, and which may be a model for global AI regulation, if successful.

Social robots in emotional healthcare were designed to support humans by means of social interaction, conversation, and mimicry of human behaviors. They can also be used to provide emotional companionship to humans whenever these humans feel lonely or depressed. Claudia Shettini discusses the role of social robots in emotional healthcare and the ethical issues surrounding them.

Italy was a little slow to embrace new AI technologies and lagged well behind its European counterparts when the AI Big Bang suddenly burst onto the scene less than a decade ago. Claudia Schettini picks up the baton on how Italy got up to speed by establishing a National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence.