Giuseppe Torre, Founder and Director of DataHubs and lecturer at the Pontifical Antonianum University, invites us to look beyond technology. The transformation we are experiencing is not primarily about tools, but about how we learn, make decisions and build organisations.
When people talk about artificial intelligence, the conversation almost always focuses on tools: which activities will be automated, which professions will change, which skills we will need to develop and which technologies we should adopt.
According to Giuseppe Torre, however, this interpretation risks remaining on the surface of the phenomenon.
The transformation under way is not primarily technological. It is cognitive.
Artificial intelligence is changing the relationship that people and organisations have with knowledge: how we produce, share, interpret and use it to make decisions. This is the deepest change, and probably the one whose scale we still underestimate.
When knowledge changes, organisations change too
For decades, many organisations were built around a simple principle: knowledge was concentrated in certain roles, functions or hierarchical levels. Those with more information made decisions. Everyone else carried them out.
Today, the limitations of this model are becoming increasingly clear.
The widespread availability of digital tools and AI systems makes information accessible that, until a few years ago, belonged to a small number of specialists. As a result, value no longer comes only from access to knowledge, but from the ability to interpret it and turn it into action.
For Torre, this is where the real challenge lies—not in simply adopting technology, but in people’s ability to give meaning to a growing amount of information.
AI is not the problem. How we make decisions is.
One of the most interesting aspects of the current transformation concerns the relationship between expertise and authority.
For generations, we associated authority with access to information that others did not possess. Today, that advantage is shrinking. Anyone can verify a fact, compare different sources or explore a topic in depth within minutes.
This does not mean experience no longer matters. It means the reason it matters is changing.
Organisations do not need people who know more facts than everyone else. They need people who can connect different pieces of information, interpret them in the right context and take responsibility for the decisions that follow.
This is where the transformation becomes cognitive.
An ethical question as well
When artificial intelligence is discussed, ethics is often treated as a regulatory or technological issue. According to Torre, the question is actually much simpler and, at the same time, much deeper.
As increasingly advanced tools enter decision-making processes, which decisions are we willing to delegate? And which do we want to continue making as human beings?
AI can already analyse large volumes of data, identify correlations, summarise documents and make recommendations. But deciding what should be done, which consequences to accept and which responsibilities to assume remains a human matter.
The challenge is therefore not whether or not to use these tools.
The challenge is to build organisations capable of using them without giving up critical thinking, judgement and responsibility.
The skills that become more important
In a context where access to knowledge is increasingly widespread, abilities long regarded as complementary to technical skills are becoming central.
Critical thinking, interpretation, discernment, judgement and the ability to read context are not “soft” skills. Increasingly, they are the skills that make it possible to create value.
Artificial intelligence can accelerate access to information. It cannot replace the ability to give that information meaning.
Competitive advantage will therefore depend not only on adopting new technologies. It will depend on the quality of the questions people know how to ask and their ability to transform information into conscious decisions.
A reflection for people professionals
For Sparq, this perspective opens up an important reflection.
If the transformation under way is primarily cognitive, then talent cannot be approached solely through technical skills, tools and processes. We need to understand how people learn, build meaning, collaborate and make decisions in increasingly complex contexts.
Ultimately, the question raised by Giuseppe Torre’s talk is not about artificial intelligence.
It is about us.
If technology is changing how we work, the real issue is whether we are changing how we think at the same speed.
Article inspired by Giuseppe Torre’s talk at Sparking Thoughts, Sparq’s format for exploring how work, organisations and leadership are changing.