Now that AI exists, the floodgates have opened. Since it is impossible to ban it, every effort is being made to regulate it. The University of Modena and Reggio has made 30,000 licences available to lecturers and students – almost one per person – specifying that ‘AI may be used as a support for understanding complex concepts, developing ideas, carrying out self-assessment activities and reworking information’. But understanding concepts and reworking information is precisely the point of studying. If we delegate this to AI, it is tantamount to encouraging people to stop thinking. Moreover, there is no detection software efficient enough, partly because the distinction between human and artificial writing is now too subtle. So, what should we do? Return to the oral tradition of the Italian university. Asking students to churn out reports is a practice that originated in nineteenth-century German seminars and was subsequently exported to the Anglo-Saxon world, but which, given the times, is proving to be a double-edged sword. Oral exams take longer and are more demanding for everyone, granted. But that is precisely why they are more useful and revealing. As for dissertations, it would be a very good idea to do away with them. Why expect such a complex writing task from young people who can barely read a novel?

Let’s seize the opportunity: instead of asking the two customary questions based on a pile of text written by who knows whom – questions that wouldn’t even stump Pinocchio and would just make the audience yawn – let’s turn the degree examination into a serious and in-depth discussion of a topic agreed upon between the professors and the student. Only in this way will the student’s knowledge of the subject, their ability to argue a case and to respond to objections be put to the test. AI has not yet learnt to break a sweat in front of an examination board. And without butterflies in the stomach and performance anxiety, what sort of university would it be?

In the interview, the minister also responded to the proposal to withdraw residence permits from foreign nationals who do not send their children to school: “This is another issue we are considering; it is a continuation of what we had already provided for in the Caivano decree when we decided to penalise parents who do not send their children to school. This penalty has led to a sharp drop in school drop-out rates in certain areas of the country.” This concern, however, is not without reason. For several weeks now, Vannacci has been ahead of the Lega in the polls and, according to the latest SWG survey, stands at 7.2 per cent, just 0.2 percentage points behind Forza Italia, the second-largest party in the governing coalition. The government’s response to this right-wing opposition has therefore shifted towards a greater focus on identity-related issues – the very strengths of the National Front (FN), which has even gone so far as to propose separate classes for foreign pupils.

It is true that the number of children without Italian citizenship has risen by 10 per cent over the last five years, reaching a total of 911,578 in the 2024/25 school year, according to data from the Single School Portal. But it is equally true that this percentage increase is also due to the demographic crisis, which has led to an 8.3 per cent decrease in the number of Italian pupils between 2020 and 2025 (-612,000), bringing the native student population to a low of 6,788,990. Therefore, based on the figures cited by the Ministry of Education itself, foreign pupils in Italian classrooms account for only 12 per cent of the total enrolment. Admittedly, this figure is a national average and may not reflect the specific circumstances of individual classrooms across the peninsula – indeed, in the north, the proportion of non-Italian pupils exceeds 17 per cent, in central Italy the figure stands at 13 per cent, whilst in the south and on the islands it is 4.6 per cent – but the fact remains that fears of classes with a ‘very high number of foreign pupils’ are largely unfounded. This is also because some of those considered foreign pupils may obtain Italian citizenship upon reaching the age of majority.

But this is not the first time the Minister for Education has spoken about the presence of foreign pupils in schools across the peninsula and the concept of ‘Italianness’. Two weeks ago, during Question Time in the Chamber of Deputies, when pressed by Fn MP Rossano Sasso for an explanation regarding the punishment meted out to two pupils at a secondary school in Cesena who, on the last day of term, had displayed a banner reading ‘Italy for Italians’, he replied: “I wish to make it clear straight away that not only is there nothing objectionable about this statement, but it is certainly one with which one can agree, as it encompasses all the citizens of our country. It is, moreover, a phrase that has been repeated on numerous occasions by the political movements that make up the current government.”

The modern American research system was founded on very different principles. In 1945, Vannevar Bush, an engineer from my own university, MIT, published the report ‘Science, the Endless Frontier’, proposing a three-way pact. The government would fund research; scientists, rather than politicians, would assess its merit; and society would benefit from it. That model forms the basis of the contemporary American university and of countless inventions in our daily lives – from neural networks to the internet.

Peer review certainly has its limitations. It can turn into ‘peer reassurance’: even we academics are not immune to herd behaviour. Furthermore, in recent years, other pressures have emerged. Various requirements relating to diversity, equity and inclusion introduced during the Biden administration have introduced non-scientific criteria into the evaluation of research – precisely the problem that the current proposals claim to want to resolve.

These are real problems that warrant a rethink. But the solution to flawed peer review is better peer review, not government oversight. Replacing scientific judgement with political alignment risks destroying the very engine of innovation we were discussing earlier. None of the great scientific discoveries of the past was inevitable; on the contrary, each was a long and uncertain gamble on ideas that might well have failed.

This is precisely the sort of research that a system of funding which can be withdrawn at any time risks eliminating: not by openly banning it, but by making it clear to every scientist that a multi-year project can be scrapped as soon as the political climate changes. At that point, the most daring discoveries are not even attempted.

So what should be done? In chats amongst colleagues at MIT over the past few weeks, several ideas have emerged. I proposed dividing the peer review process into two stages. The first would be to assess the methodological soundness of a piece of research, following traditional procedures, perhaps supplemented by artificial intelligence. The second would be to allow the relevance of the work to be discussed openly from the bottom up, enabling ideas to compete over time. Some agencies in New Zealand and Switzerland are already moving in this direction.

If enacted in its current form, the regulation in question would risk undermining American leadership in science. In "Urn Burial", Sir Thomas Browne captured the cruelty of written history. “Erostratus, who set fire to the Temple of Diana, lives on; he who built it is almost forgotten.” History remembers the arsonist more readily than the architect.

For much of the last century, America has been the architect of modern science. It would be a bitter epitaph if, on its 250th anniversary, it were to be remembered not for what it has built, but for what it has destroyed.

Carlo Ratti

An architect and engineer, he teaches at the Politecnico di Milano and at MIT in Boston, where he heads the Senseable City Lab