The Architects of Control

Source: Corriere della Sera – Paolo Benanti, Sebastiano Maffettone, “The Architects of Control”, 20 December 2025

From the surveillance of bodies to the management of minds

Paolo Benanti and Sebastiano Maffettone’s article captures a decisive shift: artificial intelligence is no longer merely a technical tool, but a new architecture of power. It no longer governs bodies, as the disciplinary systems of the twentieth century did; instead, it enters minds, emotions and decisions. This is where control changes form—invisible, continuous and normalised.

The Time magazine cover dedicated to the “architects of AI” is not a symbolic detail, but evidence of a transformation already underway. The new centres of influence are not institutional, but private; they do not answer to a democratic mandate, but to market logics and optimisation imperatives.

Algorithmic persuasion and political power

The most unsettling aspect is not a distant hypothesis of superintelligence, but the already operational combination of recommendation systems, emotional profiling and political decision-making. The ability to shape desires, consumption choices and consensus precedes any form of AGI. It is an automated, scalable and opaque persuasion.

In this scenario, AI becomes the cognitive infrastructure of society. Those who design it implicitly decide what is relevant, what is visible and what is considered true. The risk is not a sudden loss of control, but a gradual habituation to a world decided elsewhere.

Ethics as conflict, not ornament

Benanti and Maffettone point in a clear direction: the ethics of artificial intelligence cannot be reduced to guidelines or voluntary codes. It is a question of power, and as such it requires political conflict, regulation and accountability.

For Algopolio, this means rejecting the neutral narrative of technology. Innovation is never neutral: it always reflects an idea of society. Governing it is the only way to prevent AI from becoming the invisible language of a new form of domination.