An artificial intelligence used by the Alicante City Council automatically issued an invoice for 211 euros for the service provided by the firefighters to rescue a young woman who had attempted suicide due to her situation of extreme poverty. In the service, a corporal worked at 6.25 euros an hour, eight firefighters at 5.4 euros an hour and four vehicles that saved the girl, according to the detailed invoice that the “intelligent” machine ruthlessly wrote.
An artificial intelligence tracker from the Generalitat’s labor inspectorate found an advertisement for a curtain shop in Barcelona on a well-known job offer website that was looking for a saleswoman aged 40 or over. The business owner needed such a profile for two reasons. The first was to give work to a person over 40 knowing the difficulty they have in finding a job at that age. The second reason was to improve the imbalance between men and women in the store because there were more male employees. The automatism was also relentless and issued a fine of 7,501 euros for “discrimination in access to employment.” The merchant asked to explain himself humanly to the labor inspectorate and they did not even want to talk about it because “the law is the law” (and I add, the machine is its cruel executing arm). This merchant went to the Sindica de Greuges and there they did listen to human ears that agreed with him, although they advised him to pay and then claim.
These are two recent cases of the danger of dehumanization that comes with delegating to a machine issues that affect people with innumerable circumstances that only a human educated in ethical and moral values ??can discern beyond the algorithm. As the Alicante City Council recognized before the botched invoice to the suicide girl, the fault lay with an automated bureaucracy that lacks feelings.
The administration cannot in any way be dehumanized in this way, no matter how much some thinking head is guessing the savings in officials that the incorporation of ruthless artificial intelligence may entail. These officials should be the watchmen of these machines to prevent them from committing inhuman abuses. For this, it is necessary that the political leaders and the institutions that ensure an administration that cares for the people impose criteria of humanity. Otherwise, a revolt against a soulless artificial intelligence is on the horizon.
As happens with all technological advances, we will go through a phase of learning and making mistakes, but we must be clear about the role that machines must play, set the border to where the robot can go and submit the last decision to a human . Nothing is good or bad by nature, the question is how it is used. And therein lies the challenge, let’s dominate the machine if we don’t want it to dominate us.
