Artificial Intelligence is transforming science, technology, society, and culture. Europe must not simply adapt to this transformation but actively shape it.
With these motivations in mind, we ask the European institutions to create a new European Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, to be conceived not as an industrial infrastructure but as a scientific and cultural initiative grounded in long-term vision, theoretical depth, and independence from corporate or political agendas.

[L’Intelligenza Artificiale sta trasformando la ricerca scientifica e tecnologica, la società e la cultura. L’Europa non deve limitarsi a subire questa trasformazione, ma deve plasmarla attivamente.
Con queste motivazioni, chiediamo alle istituzioni europee di creare un nuovo Centro Europeo di Ricerca sull’Intelligenza Artificiale, concepito non come un’infrastruttura industriale, ma come un’iniziativa scientifica e culturale fondata su una visione di lungo periodo, dotata di una profonda base teorica e indipendente da interessi aziendali o politici.]

The petition stems from the initiative of the Physics Nobel Prize winner Giorgio Parisi and Pierluigi Contucci, and is supported by leading researchers in the field of artificial intelligence. The following Manifesto has been proposed on the occasion of the round table Towards a European Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, which took place in Bologna on October 9, 2025, featuring renowned experts in artificial intelligence and machine learning and organized by Pierluigi Contucci, Gabriele Sicuro, Federica Gerace, Emanuele Mingione, and Giorgio Parisi. The manifesto’s first signatories include prominent figures from the fields of scientific research and artificial intelligence, including, among others, Yoshua Bengio, Michael Bronstein, Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, Luciano Maiani, Marc Mézard, Sara Solla, and Cédric Villani.

The promoters
Pierluigi Contucci, Giorgio Parisi, Francesco Camilli, Federica Gerace, Gabriele Sicuro

Recording of the Roundtable in Bologna on October 9th, 2025

THE MANIFESTO

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming science, technology, society, and culture. Europe must not merely adapt to this transformation but actively shape it according to human values as well as match the state-of-the-art elsewhere to stay economically and politically resilient if AI capabilities continue to grow. We propose the creation of a European Research Center for Artificial Intelligence: a scientific initiative founded on human capital and long-term vision, grounded in theoretical depth, safety and ethics at its core, equipped with a steadily growing endowment of computing power, and designed to interact dynamically with start-ups and industries.

The Center will be founded on the following principles:

1. The Scientific Core — Prioritize foundational research to understand AI’s mechanisms along with its potential but also its, risks and their mitigation. This will provide the conceptual frameworks that enable innovation for the benefit of all, much as thermodynamics empowered the steam engine two centuries ago.
Explore, experimentally and theoretically, new directions of AI and new models. Examples could include systems that reason or self-improve, how to design AI that will not harm people or cross moral red lines, either because of user instructions or of its own accord, multimodal models aiming at creating representations of the world, new generations of large language models, less greedy in terms of compute and data.
Create the conditions for the development of applications, also in partnership with the private sector, with the understanding that trustworthiness of AI systems is a necessary precondition for successful adoption.

2. Human Capital First — Invest in people, creating an environment for top researchers and engineers to work with intellectual freedom and purpose. A compact core of permanent staff will be complemented by medium-term fellowships and a rotating network of visiting scientists, a human capital ranging from doctoral students to senior scientists.

3. Interdisciplinary Teams — The Center will bring together scientists from various disciplines, software developers, and large system builders who will work side by side, contributing different but complementary skills to a common scientific and humanistic endeavor.

4. Attracting Top Talent to Europe — The Center will offer competitive conditions, long-term support, and freedom to pursue ambitious ideas, with access to excellent students, modern infrastructures, a dedicated access to high-level computers, and a supportive administration. Its interdisciplinary setting will create the intellectual energy needed to attract and retain world-class researchers in Europe.

5. Alternative Competitive Path — Foster the conditions for small to medium visionary teams to achieve high-impact competitive results, developing efficient models that build on Europe’s areas of excellence, such as multilingual language technologies, robotics, healthcare and biomedical research, climate and environmental modeling, safe and ethical development and privacy-preserving AI, just to mention a few. These efforts will be supported by trusted datasets, reproducible training pipelines, and shared capability and risk evaluation standards.

6. Institutional Independence and Governance — Guarantee scientific independence through transparent governance: a non-profit legal form, a Governing Board which includes representatives of the stakeholders as well as of the scientific community, rotating leadership, and an independent Scientific Advisory Board. Ensure open calls and merit-based selection, strict conflict-of-interest rules, and freedom to publish. A diversified funding base will safeguard the Center’s scientific independence.

7. Technology Hub and Partner Foundation — Establish a dedicated structure to connect research with industry and society: a Technology Hub/Partner Foundation that manages collaborative projects, rapid prototyping, and joint IP frameworks; supports startup creation and growth; organizes the conditions for knowledge, code, and data transfer both for AI researchers and for companies, and shields early-stage ventures from premature acquisition. Industry partnerships are encouraged but always balanced by public interest, ensuring resilient innovation ecosystems.

8. Sustainability and Energy Efficiency — Make energy efficiency a core research theme, addressing AI’s environmental impact and pioneering sustainable computational models.

9. Safe and Accessible Models and Public Benefit — Prioritize open-source development when it does not endanger the public, to ensure AI tools are available to researchers, institutions, companies, and citizens, strengthening democratic access and fostering innovation.

10. Global Openness with European Roots — Rooted in Europe’s scientific traditions of critical inquiry, collaboration, and rigor, cultivate alliances with leading research institutions in Europe and worldwide, promoting AI research as a bridge for peace and cooperation.

11. Operational Model — Follow a lean, high-impact model: small permanent staff, access and management of large-scale computer resources, strong technical support. The Center will develop strong collaborations with AI research centers in European countries and with European networks; it will also work with existing -or to be developed- European hardware infrastructures to avoid duplication and maximize efficiency. The endowment of computing facilities will grow in a modular way, combining resources already available in Europe with those of the Center. The Center will benefit from a physical hub where researchers can meet and collaborate. Its own computing resources will be strengthened through synergies between core and partner institutions.

12. Ethics and Societal Impact — Embed ethical reflection and societal impact assessment into the research agenda from the outset, anticipating social, economic, security and cultural consequences, and engaging with policymakers, civil society, and the public to align innovation with democratic values, human rights, and the public interest.

Call to Action
This is a decisive moment for Europe. The future of AI will be written somewhere; let it take root here, in the language of science, public interest, and shared responsibility. We urge institutions, researchers, and leaders from the public and private sectors to join forces now, contribute ideas and resources, and help shape the foundation of this Center. Together, we can ensure that artificial intelligence grows as a tool for knowledge, cooperation, and the public good.

Pierluigi Contucci University of Bologna
Giorgio Parisi Sapienza University of Rome

Elena Agliari Sapienza University of Rome
Ugo Amaldi CERN
Luigi Ambrosio Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Marco Armoni Studio Armoni & Associati
Silvio Pietro Angori Pininfarina
Marco Baity-Jesi ETH
Jean Barbier ICTP
Marco Baroni ICREA
Ernesto Belisario Studio Legale E-Lex
Yoshua Bengio University of Montreal
Luigi Antonio Bertolo RAI
Aude Billard EPFL
Giulio Biroli ENS Paris
Daniele Bonacorsi University of Bologna
Leardo Botti Scuole Emilia Romagna
Paolo Branchini Roma Tre & INFN
Alessandro Breccia UCL
Michael Bronstein Deep Mind & University of Oxford
Raffaella Burioni University of Parma
Massimo Cacciari 
Francesco Camilli University of Bologna
Rita Casadio University of Bologna
Lucio Cocco University of Bologna
Giorgio Consigli Khalifa University
Anna Corrado Magistratura
Vincenzo Coscia University of Ferrara
Fabio Cuzzolin Oxford Brookes University
Giuseppe De Pietro Pegaso University
Aurélien Decelle Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Giacomo De Palma University of Bologna
Atish Dabholkar ICTP
Giovanna Dossena University of Bergamo
Gianluca Dotti Press
Antonio Ereditato University of Bern
Aldo Gangemi University of Bologna
Federica Gerace University of Bologna
Claudio Giberti University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Sebastian Goldt SISSA
Sandro Graffi University of Bologna
Geoffrey Hinton University of Toronto
Angela Ianaro University of Naples Federico II 
Alessio Jacona Press
Frédéric Kaplan EPFL
János Kertész Central European University
Alessandro Laio SISSA
Yann LeCun Courant Institute New York University
Stefano Leonardi Sapienza University of Rome
Bruno Loureiro ENS Paris
Luciano Maiani Sapienza University of Rome
Antoine Maillard INRIA & ENS Paris
Gianluca Manzan University of Bologna
Théo Marchetta University of Bologna
Anderson Melchor Hernandez University of Bologna
Ezio Mesini University of Bologna
Marc Mézard Bocconi University
Marco Mondelli IST Austria
Massimo Miscusi University of Ferrara
Carlo Nucci University of Bologna
Emanuele Mingione University of Bologna
Andrea Omicini University of Bologna
Antonio Polosa Sapienza University of Rome
Laura Radi Nemetria
Valentina Ros LPTMS - CNRS & Paris-Saclay
Andrea Ripa Titular Bishop of Cerveteri
Stuart Russell Berkeley University
Gabriele Sicuro University of Bologna
Alina Sîrbu University of Bologna
Beatriz Seoane Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Sara Solla Northwestern University
Daniele Tantari University of Bologna
Pierfrancesco Urbani Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, CEA, IPhT
Rodrigo Veiga  University of Nottingham
Cecilia Vernia University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Cédric Villani IHES
Matthieu Wyart John Hopkins University
Riccardo Zecchina Bocconi University