Reflection from Italian Tech Week by Cat Rigoni, Director of Marketing & Ecosystem, Sciopolis

I was at Italian Tech Week in Turin last week, and I’ve been buzzing with ideas since. So many glimpses into a near and fast-approaching future, so many reasons to feel optimistic.

But one thought has stayed with me more than any other: AI is no longer just the how , it’s becoming the what.

That shift, from enabler to essence, is already reshaping how innovation happens in healthcare, and the Evening Standard article earlier this week reminded me of it:

👉 Doctors swapping stethoscopes for startups —

The story of Cera, founded by Dr Ben Maruthappu, is particularly telling. What began as a marketplace connecting carers has evolved into a fully integrated homecare model powered by AI, where data, logistics, and service delivery merge into one intelligent system.

Domain expertise as the new differentiator

The article also underscored something we don’t talk about enough: domain expertise is the new frontier of innovation.

A lot of the talks in Turin were about AI “unencumbering humanity” from menial tasks, from legacy and from infrastructure: a real industrial revolution, which is in constant acceleration towards us.

Clinicians who turn founders, often out of frustration with the slow-moving reality of the NHS, bring a rare combination of depth and urgency. They understand patient journeys, system inefficiencies, and the human cost of delay.

And when that knowledge and domain expertise is freed from the weight of legacy infrastructure, innovation can move at the speed of insight.

Robotics and the redefinition of surgical work

That same re-imagination is happening inside the operating theatre.

One of the most riveting sessions in Turin featured Jason Hart and surgeon Filippo Filicori — offering a glimpse into the near future of surgical robotics.

It showed, with startling clarity, how precision machines will soon handle the long, intricate, painstaking tasks of surgery, allowing humans to focus only where judgment still matter most.

With AI now predicting surgical risks upfront and recommending which parts of an operation it can safely take over, the role of the surgeon is rapidly evolving. Instead of standing for hours in physically demanding positions over a patient, surgeons can operate seated via a VR console, collaborating in real time with colleagues across the globe.

They can focus solely on the value-add parts of the procedure: the moments requiring judgment, adaptability and empathy. For routine tasks like suturing? Voilà: press autopilot and let the machine handle it.

The surgeon of tomorrow will be less a manual operator and more a conductor of complex systems. The implications are huge in terms of training of resources(quicker thanks to simulators), accessing excellence (easier, if you only need a fraction of the surgeon's time) and equality of care (potentially guaranteed, if you are freed up of geographic constraints and can be operated remotely).

A new anatomy of medicine

What we’re witnessing is the fusion of biology, code and mechanics into a continuum.

AI, once the invisible engine of analysis, is becoming the solution itself. Robotics, once peripheral, is entering the core of clinical work.

And humans — doctors, researchers, innovators- are hastily repositioning themselves where machines cannot (yet) reach: at the intersection of judgment, ethics, and imagination.

It’s the future, and it’s close. We’re talking years, not decades.

 But where are we, in this picture?

For all the brilliance and excitement during the three day event, one thing felt very absent for me: an honest, philosophical and anthropological conversation about the future of mankind when machines take over.

I heard a lot about acceleration, automation, and unencumbering humanity from tasks, but no one attempted as much as a sketch of how we, the humans, fit into this. What is our purpose when we are totally unencumbered? How long before the surgeon doesn't even need to do the value-add bit of the operation? There’s a growing unease in the silence.

Are we not talking about it because it would generate panic?  Does Jeff Bezos know something we don’t? Is he building subterranean bunkers for a reason?

We don’t need blind optimism, we need the right forums to socialise our role in this space, to talk openly about ethics, agency, the price we pay for progress and the kind of society we want to build alongside intelligent machines (if we are allowed to exist, that is).

Innovation without introspection risks becoming alienating.

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