From the alliance between the nonprofit organizations Per Esempio Onlus and PUSH, “Prompt4, Department of Responsible AI for Social and Sustainable Impact” is born in Palermo.
The two organizations, active for over ten years in the design of educational programs, social inclusion initiatives, and urban innovation projects, are joining forces to create a research-action initiative aimed at strengthening the connection between social commitment and technological development.
Artificial intelligence is now an integral part of the daily lives of individuals and organizations. As its opportunities and risks are increasingly explored, the nonprofit sector is also engaging with it—often through a utilitarian lens focused on performance enhancement.
We felt the need to create an independent, organized space for study, reflection, and experimentation on the use of AI and on the social and environmental impacts it generates. This department was established precisely to question, spark debate, and promote solutions oriented toward sustainable growth and the strengthening of communities.
We believe that artificial intelligence has the potential to be an extraordinarily powerful tool for making the projects and interventions carried out daily by the third sector more effective, inclusive, and transformative. When guided by a conscious vision oriented toward the common good, AI can act as a lever capable of amplifying social impact and fostering more inclusive communities. Conversely, if used shortsightedly, it risks being reduced to a mere productivity accelerator, failing to generate real change and instead fueling competitive and stereotyped dynamics, rather than strengthening our capacity to care for people.
A telling example is participation in funding calls: AI tools have multiplied the ability to produce project proposals, intensifying competition and often reducing the quality of project design to a purely stylistic exercise. Another crucial aspect lies in identifying and overcoming the current cognitive biases of generative AI, which are fueled by data that reproduce power relations and reflect deep-rooted social dynamics. In this field as well, effective intervention requires not only the correction of models, but a critical rethinking of the social systems that generate those data.
Can a system that is being challenged by artificial intelligence—along with many other factors—be reimagined? Can a human-centered interpretation of the phenomenon guide the use of artificial tools toward different ends, calling into question the adequacy of the current grant-based system? Can new organizational capacities be put at the service of new trust-based and collaborative alliances, rather than competitive ones?
Practices moving in this direction already exist. In India, the AgTech for Agroecology movement employs artificial intelligence solutions to support real-time decision-making based on soil monitoring and the integration of local knowledge networks, promoting technological sovereignty for farming communities and encouraging the spread of agroecological models.
Prompt4 has already taken its first steps as well. Nadir, developed by PUSH with the support of Per Esempio, is a prototype of a multilingual conversational agent designed to simplify access to fundamental rights for migrant communities by democratizing information with the support of local networks.
Today, questioning, fostering debate, and experimenting with solutions guided by social intentionality is as urgent as it is necessary in the pursuit of growth and development goals capable of caring for the communities in which they operate. Prompt4 aims to involve professionals from research, philosophy, and design, as well as authoritative figures from public administration, the social economy, and the business sector, with the ambition of guiding processes of critical change.
What lies ahead is an ambitious challenge: to rethink the relationship between technology and society, starting from the third sector, from communities, and from the environment.
