This question is the result of a stereotype that needs to be overturned.
A few days ago, at the 2026 Turin International Book Fair, during a debate on artificial intelligence, I heard this question posed.
And I continue to think that the problem lies precisely in the way we approach the topic.
Because if we pit innovation and rights against each other, we risk implicitly accepting the idea that rights are a limit to be managed, in a merely conservative approach—which, paradoxically, is precisely that of artificial intelligence—while innovation is an inevitable race to be accelerated toward “progress.”
This is the reflection I began yesterday, during the final Piedmont event of EDIH-PAI.
In my speech, I tried to shift the perspective.
The question shouldn’t be: “innovation or rights?” but: “who designs digital, for whom, and with what consequences?”
And a technology doesn’t automatically become inclusive just because it’s innovative.
I then shared some reflections on the need to move from a vision of digital technology centered solely on the individual to an idea of an “us” infrastructure, with the creation of spaces capable of: fostering participation, valorizing differences, such as gender, building relationships, making often invisible needs visible, and strengthening communities.
Because the risk today isn’t just technological exclusion. It’s the construction of seemingly neutral models that embody imbalances and limited perspectives.
I also shared some concrete experiences of digital civic technologies used in gender urban planning, such as the participatory mapping developed in Emilia-Romagna, and in territorial co-design processes to represent relationships, needs, services, and local networks in the territorial regeneration processes of marginalized places, for example in Sardinia.
Experiences in which digital technology serves not only to automate processes, but to build collective capacity.
Public administration and the social economy, the beneficiaries of EDIH-PAI, are ideal environments for experimentation in this direction, while not forgetting the fundamental issues they face in digital transformation processes.
Because the sustainability of digitalization is not measured solely in terms of technological efficiency, but in the ability to build a more equitable, participatory, and humane future.
