HEDY Booklet - Life in the AI era (long version)

HEDY - Life in the AI era is a 2-year Erasmus+ project started in November 2021. Its goal is to offer a comprehensive and shared view of how AI is affecting our lives and reshaping our socioeconomic, cultural, and human environments by promoting critical reflection, self-based learning and debate on these issues. The main target for this project is the higher education audience. Four specific objectives will be produced to reach this goal, the first of which is the Booklet, the subject of this paper. The Booklet is an essay defining the HEDY position on life in the AI era and the rationale for that position. In this paper, we describe and present the results of our two-fold approach to build our rationale about the challenges, opportunities and expected impact of AI on four areas: business, governance, skills & competencies, and people & lifestyle. This two-fold approach consists of collecting information from two sources: i) Literature survey, and ii) Interaction with people. Clearly, the first source consists of collecting the current state of knowledge about the impact of AI. The second source was a mixed approach consisting of both questionnaires and focus groups conducted in five different European countries with either experts or non-experts in AI. These two sources provide a unique contribution on AI panorama by combining state of the art research with first-hand opinions and debated questions, concerns, and ideas of interacting individuals.