Governing Innovation Is a Political Choice

Source: Il Sole 24 Ore – Paolo Benanti, “The Ability to Govern Technological Innovation Defines Its Ethical Outcome”, 18 December 2025

The technocratic illusion of automatic growth

In the debate on artificial general intelligence, Paolo Benanti dismantles one of the most persistent illusions: that increasing computational capacity will automatically produce collective well-being. Optimistic macroeconomic projections overlook a decisive variable—the distribution of value.

AI can increase productivity, but it does not decide who benefits from it. Without political governance, cognitive automation risks widening inequalities, compressing human labour and concentrating wealth and power in the hands of those who control technological infrastructure.

Algorithmic capital and the crisis of labour

The central issue is asymmetry: AI profits tend to accumulate within computational capital, while social costs fall on labour and welfare systems. This is not about demonising innovation, but recognising that the market alone is not capable of managing a transformation of this magnitude.

The implicit proposal is radical: if artificial intelligence becomes a structural factor of production, then it must be treated as such. Taxation, redistribution and new forms of social guarantees are not obstacles to innovation—they are conditions for democratic sustainability.

The real risk: letting algorithms decide

Benanti reverses the perspective: the problem is not that AI decides in our place, but that we accept no longer deciding at all. Every renunciation of governance is a political choice disguised as technical neutrality.

For Algopolio, this is the decisive point. The ethical outcome of innovation does not depend on the power of models, but on the collective capacity to set limits, impose rules and redistribute value. Without this capacity, artificial intelligence will not be a tool of progress, but the perfect device for making inequalities permanent.