Not one empty seat. For four evenings this fall, the Italian Cultural Institute of New York on Park Avenue was full for AI4Progress, a series of talks on artificial intelligence.

The crowds said as much as the speakers did: Italians, Americans, New Yorkers, everybody is curious about AI, many people are clearly worried about it, and they came looking for someone to explain what is really happening. The final evening was about business and the future of work, and it offered two very different answers. Manuela Veloso, who built JPMorganChase’s AI research team from scratch after decades at Carnegie Mellon, spoke as an open optimist.

In her view, AI will not replace workers. It will take the repetitive tasks off their hands, in a partnership she calls “symbiotic autonomy,” where machines and people learn from each other. Marco Camisani Calzolari, who advises the Italian government on its national AI strategy, was more cautious. Earlier technologies automated execution, he noted, but this one automates judgment. Companies are no longer just installing software; they are effectively hiring it, and they need to ask who it answers to. His most quotable prediction was that firms won’t fire as many people as we fear. They will simply stop hiring interns.

the Italian Cultural Institute of New York on Park Avenue was full for AI4Progress

The two speakers stood for two lines of thought: the enthusiasm of the people who build these systems and the caution of the people who have to govern them. That tension was the whole point of the series.

Behind it is Luciano Floridi, the Rome-born philosopher who left Oxford to found the Digital Ethics Center at Yale and who curated AI4Progress with the Institute. Floridi is no doomsayer.

Philosopher Luciano Floridi speaking at the Italian Institute

For him, the real danger is not a rogue machine but handing society’s future to a few private companies. His answer fits in one word, which he said multiple times on Park Avenue: regulate, regulate, regulate.

Floridi helped shape the European Union’s AI Act. He points out that Washington has shown little interest in federal AI legislation, so States are filling the gap. His Yale center has brought lawmakers from across the country to New Haven to help them write rules that protect the public without stifling innovation.

The danger, he warns, is a patchwork: “Having 50 different state policies is not a sustainable way to do business.” In his view, good legislation supports good innovation, and nobody has to lose. He has also been blunt about the alternative.

In his words, the hundreds of voluntary codes the tech industry wrote for itself turned out to be almost embarrassingly empty. It is a very European message, delivered by an Italian in the heart of Manhattan. Judging by the full rooms, New Yorkers were happy to listen.