According to Jannuzzi, many solutions are already in place in Brazilian municipalities but remain invisible. “There’s a silent revolution in the qualification of public managers. We need to document local experiences and make them available for national debate” (photo: Daniel Antônio/Agência FAPESP)
Published on 09/15/2025
By José Tadeu Arantes | Agência FAPESP – Individualistic solutions that only serve the interests of certain groups will not ensure society’s dignified survival in a context of growing inequality, wars, extremism, and the consequences of climate change and an aging population. This was the assessment of Paulo Jannuzzi, speaker at the 6th edition of the FAPESP 2025 Conferences: “Contributions to COP30 – The Interface between Knowledge and Management in Public Policy” on August 29.
Jannuzzi is a professor at the National School of Statistical Sciences of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (ENCE-IBGE), the director of the Center for Interinstitutional Collaboration on Artificial Intelligence Applied to Public Policy (CIAP), a collaborator in the professional master’s program in evaluation and monitoring at the National School of Public Administration (ENAP), and a collaborating researcher at the Center for Public Policy Studies at the State University of Campinas (NEPP-UNICAMP). He was the Secretary of Information Evaluation and Management at the Ministry of Social Development (2011-2016) and a member of the Panel of Experts in Evaluation at the International Evaluation Office of the United Nations Program in New York (2016-2019).
The expert began his lecture with a presentation on the civilizational challenges of the 21st century, emphasizing that they cannot be addressed with scientific evidence alone. “Evidence isn’t neutral. It’s based on values that may be more republican or more individualistic,” he said.
One of the central points of the lecture was a reflection on the role of artificial intelligence (AI). Jannuzzi warned of the dangers of the technological race between large companies. “We’re experiencing a very strong moment for big tech companies. They’re competing for the 21st-century information market, accelerating the development of artificial intelligence without ethical commitment,” he said. He noted that the lack of social network regulation has already caused significant harm through the proliferation of hate speech and fake news. “The same can happen with AI. There’s a risk of creating autonomous artificial intelligences that legitimize flat-earth theories and normalize hate speech and discrimination.”
However, the researcher also noted that this new technology opens up unprecedented possibilities. “Artificial intelligence is more open to reliable information because it needs consistent discourse. And it’s breaking down the boundaries between scientific disciplines because it can bring together areas that previously had little communication and articulate views that previously seemed heretical. This allows us to go beyond the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary to achieve truly transdisciplinary knowledge,” he said.
Public policies need to be based on civilizational values, not just efficiency metrics, Jannuzzi emphasized (photo: Daniel Antônio/Agência FAPESP)
Jannuzzi used cultural metaphors to illustrate possible futures. One dystopian example would be the Los Angeles of the movie Blade Runner, which is dominated by extreme inequality and a lack of regulation. Another, more positive scenario would resemble the mythical paradise Shangri-La from the 1970s remake of the movie Lost Horizon. This scenario would be similar to Portugal, a country with high taxes, a robust healthcare and education system, intergenerational solidarity, and regulation of artificial intelligence. Between these two extremes, Jannuzzi positions Brazil closer to the scenario of the movie Bacurau, “with public policies halfway there and incomplete citizenship.”
To transition from Bacurau to Shangri-La, Jannuzzi emphasized the need for solutions grounded in republican values. He pointed to the application of artificial intelligence to public policy as a tool. With this objective in mind, he underscores the importance of creating the “IA2PP Research Network – Artificial Intelligence Applied to Public Policy”, a proposal developed by the Center for Studies and Research Applied to the Public Sector at the Federal University of Goiás (CEPASP-UFG), NEPP-UNICAMP, and ENCE-IBGE, with contributions from partners.
“We’re investing in this project. Our artificial intelligence doesn’t cover everything; it’s been programmed to answer questions that mayors and managers have: How can we reduce waiting lists in the SUS [acronym for Sistema Único de Saúde, Brazil’s national public health network]? How can we improve school performance? How can we include the homeless population? That’s the purpose of the IA2PP Research Network,” said Jannuzzi. He added that one practical application of the network is ChatPP, a conversational AI trained in public policy.
The researcher revealed that many solutions are already in place in Brazilian municipalities, but remain invisible. “There’s a silent revolution in the qualification of public managers. We need to document local experiences and make them available for national debate.”
Jannuzzi insisted that public policies must be based on civilizational values, not just efficiency metrics. He defended the 1988 Constitution as a guide for building a “free, fair, and supportive society.”
In addition to Jannuzzi, three other panelists participated in the conference: Gabriela Marques Di Giulio, professor at the University of São Paulo’s School of Public Health and researcher at the FAPESP Research Program on Biodiversity Characterization, Conservation, Restoration, and Sustainable Use (BIOTA); Jean Ometto, senior researcher at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and deputy coordinator of the Brazilian Research Network on Global Climate Change (Rede CLIMA); and Rafael Barreiro Chaves, environmental specialist at the Department for the Environment, Infrastructure, and Logistics (SEMIL) and deputy director of BIOTA Synthesis, funded by FAPESP.
Di Giulio pointed out that overcoming the climate emergency requires co-producing and recognizing the diversity of knowledge. “We need to promote a dialogical and respectful interaction between scientists, policymakers, and society in all its plurality. We’re all producers of knowledge – scientific, empirical, traditional, local. The challenge is to legitimize these different forms of knowledge and not let so-called scientific evidence prevail.”
Ometto emphasized the importance of taking advantage of windows of opportunity. “Public policy is complex and multifaceted, but there are moments when a window opens. At these moments, science must offer robust, reliable, and trustworthy information so that managers can make decisions that will impact productive and social systems for 20 or 30 years. Science doesn’t have a silver bullet, but when it has credibility, it helps to sustain long-term policies, as we have seen in the SUS or in the National Climate Change Policy.”
Chaves, in turn, emphasized the urgency of transforming the relationship between researchers and managers into a two-way street. “When researchers construct their questions together with managers, they understand the limits, possibilities, and implementation time. It’s in this dialogue that concrete, real, and feasible solutions emerge. Co-production, as Paulo Jannuzzi said, is part of a civilizational advance: we need to move away from technocratic, one-way logic and create shared knowledge. This means bringing managers into the research process, from start to finish, and also involving researchers in the day-to-day efforts of public management.”
The conference was organized by Vanessa Elias de Oliveira, professor at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC) and coordinator of the FAPESP Public Policy Research Program (PPPP). It was moderated by Sabine Righetti, researcher and professor at the Laboratory for Advanced Studies in Journalism (LABJOR) at UNICAMP and coordinator of FAPESP’s Media Science Program.
The 6th FAPESP Conference “Contributions to COP30 – The Interface between Knowledge and Management in Public Policy” can be viewed in its entirety at www.youtube.com/live/9Lhd8oAF5BE.
Source: https://agencia.fapesp.br/55883
