Everyone is a geek now, that is: devoted to technological innovations. Mobile has confirmed it again. Given the obvious psychological dependence that the smartphone creates in children, adolescents and adults, it is often said that we must distinguish between science and technology. Science would be good, but technology can have perverse purposes and uses. But if digital technoscience demonstrates anything, it is that every scientific view always incorporates a technological starting point, as happens to a furniture manufacturer when he visits a forest. Western culture has lacked Greek restraint. Prometheus is punished because he offers fire to humans, with which they were able to manipulate metals and make instruments. Prometheus’ fault? Dispute the gods’ supremacy.
Umberto Galimberti remembers in The Myths of Our Time two great contributions of Hegel. The first: wealth does not depend on goods but on instruments. In this sense, artificial intelligence (AI) will soon be the determining instrument of economic, social and cultural life. An invisible power. Hegel’s second contribution reads like this: when a phenomenon grows from a quantitative point of view, it not only produces an increase in quantity, but also a radical qualitative variation. If an earthquake of magnitude 1 or 2 (Richter scale) occurs now, we would not even notice, but if it is magnitude 8 or 9, our cities will sink. An AI present in all phones and computers is a historic earthquake. If whoever controls the AI ??wants to move in one direction, won’t it move forward? What ethics could condition AI, which generates so much benefit?
If there were a universal ethic, we would have already found solutions for famines and minority diseases. If there were a universal ethic, we would not joyfully advance towards the third world war. There are ethical filters in artificial intelligence, yes: they are governed by algorithms. They have the capacity to intoxicate public opinion irrefutably, since those manipulated are convinced of being completely free. For example: queer culture spreads as a great liberating transgression, although in reality what pushes and favors it are the algorithms with gender fluidity bias that ChatGPT has incorporated (like all its competitors). The ability of AI to intoxicate and manipulate will be infinite. It will have a power over humanity never seen in history. Going back to Prometheus, some humans have found a way to supplant god: they are the ones who control the algorithms.
To combat techno-pessimism it is often said that technology can be used for good and evil. What would we do without dynamite or nuclear energy? True: dynamite has helped open many roads through mountains. True: nuclear energy has illuminated and heated entire cities. But Mr. Nobel created the prizes out of guilt and Mr. Oppenheimer, considered the father of the atomic bomb and now topical for a film, said: “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds” and spent the rest of his life with regrets. We are giving all the power to new digital technologies. We gladly accept their shackles. One day humanity will no longer be able to free itself from it, like the frog in the pot of water that is heated on the stove until it is killed. With one difference: now the frog gets into the pot passionately, willingly.
