AI asks. Humans answer.
We spend a lot of time asking what AI can understand about humans. So we decided to reverse the question.
In this series, AI interviews the people behind MorphCast — not about job titles or company milestones, but about the bigger questions shaping technology, human behavior, privacy and the future of AI.
For the first conversation, we asked Stefano Bargagni, founder of MorphCast, to look at today’s AI revolution through the lens of more than three decades of digital innovation.
Stefano was building digital businesses long before AI became part of everyday language. We asked him what feels genuinely new this time, what feels familiar, and what past technology waves can teach us about the one we are living through now.
1. You were building Internet companies before most people had ever bought anything online. When you look at AI today, what feels genuinely new — and what feels surprisingly familiar?
Stefano:
What surprises me most is that people react to real innovations like AI in much the same way they did decades ago: the same speeches, the same fears, the same skepticism we saw with personal computing in the 1980s and later with the birth of the Internet.
It makes me wonder why we seem to have so little memory of how we reacted to previous major changes. This surprises me much more than AI itself.
When it comes to LLMs, they are genuinely disruptive because they give humans incredible power, available to almost everyone, everywhere. Just as the Internet made it possible to work from Sicily as easily as from San Francisco, LLMs are now within everyone’s reach and can create more equal opportunities.
That part feels familiar to me. What continues to surprise me is our lack of memory whenever a major change happens. We repeat the same fears: that the new technology will eliminate jobs, destroy humanity, and so on — while at the same time we start using it every day!
2. Every major technology wave arrives with enormous expectations. While you are still in the middle of one, how do you tell the difference between a real transformation and hype?
Stefano:
A real transformation is happening when almost everyone starts using a technology, changing their behavior and adopting it at scale. We have seen this happen repeatedly: with PCs, the Internet, smartphones and, further back, calculators, computers, cars and printing.
3. For decades, computers have mostly required humans to adapt to them. Do you think AI is finally starting to reverse that relationship — making technology adapt more naturally to people instead?
Stefano:
Yes, of course. But even here, humans also need to adapt to AI to get the results they want. We see this every day: if you want an AI agent to do a good job, you need to teach it what you want and how you want it done.
This process of adaptation is itself a human behavior, and it is something we are all learning day by day.
4. If machines become better at recognizing human signals, does that necessarily make technology more human?
Stefano:
Technology cannot really become more human. It can become easier to interact with, and it can imitate certain human behaviors. If that is what we mean by “more human,” then yes, AI is a step forward.
We also know that AI is trained on human-generated content, so there is inevitably something human embedded in the way these systems learn and respond.
5. Emotion AI is often described as technology that can “understand people.” Do you think that language goes too far? Where would you draw the line between recognizing signals and understanding a person?
Stefano:
Understanding a person is largely a matter of empathy. People with strong psychological or interpersonal skills can understand others much better than most of us.
Recognizing signals can help, but it does not mean that a system is “understanding” a person. What it can do is provide additional information to someone who is trying to understand that person.
Having objective, measurable signals related to a person’s response can be useful, for example, to psychologists, trainers, tutors or parents. The signals can support human understanding, but they are not a substitute for it.
6. Looking back at the early days of MorphCast, is there something you believed about Emotion AI that you would describe differently today?
Stefano:
In the early days of MorphCast, our ambition was to improve communication through interactive video, using emotional signals to influence the interaction.
I still believe in that evolution, but today the potential fields of application appear much broader and more diverse. Robotics is one example.
7. Ten years from now, what would need to have happened for you to say that AI — and Emotion AI in particular — developed in the right direction?
Stefano:
Ethics, and greater attention to how people feel. I don’t think we currently consider this enough as a real value.
I believe we are moving toward a future in which money may no longer be the only currency that matters. And in that future, emotions will matter.
About the series
AI asks. Humans answer. is a MorphCast interview series exploring AI through the perspectives of the people building, studying and communicating it.
Instead of asking the usual questions about roles, careers and company milestones, we ask about the assumptions, limits and unresolved questions behind the technology.
