The progressive cynicism with which artificial intelligence will be abused will test our ability to distinguish between truth and lies. To prepare you, I propose here, dear readers, a small mental exercise.
Let’s see if you know which of the following three phrases are fake and which are real.
Former Spanish prime ministers Mariano Rajoy, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and José María Aznar appeared on stage this week to proclaim their joint repudiation of insults, lies and defamation in politics.
Former United States presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush proclaimed this week their joint repudiation of insults, lies and defamation in politics.
The former presidents of Uruguay Pepe Mujica, Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera and Julio María Sanguinetti proclaimed this week their joint repudiation of insults, lies and defamation in politics.
I trust that the majority have got it right: the first two are false; the third is the good one.
The thing is that I have just traveled to Uruguay, a thirteen-hour journey to a better world, a country defined by the UN and others as the second in democracy, transparency and security on the American continent, after Canada. The week I spent in Montevideo offered me a vision of democratic civilization deliciously foreign to the barbarism that consumes political discourse in Spain, where I live, and in the United States, whose Trumpist madness hypnotizes me.
The hackneyed word polarization falls short of describing what is experienced in the United States and Spain, not to mention the rest of Latin America, particularly Argentina, where politicians have long used anger as their preferred means of expression. In Uruguay, polarization would be an unknown phenomenon if it were not for the fact that some read the international sections of their newspapers. What defines them there is consensus, a virtue they never stop boasting about.
I offer you as an example the taxi driver who picked me up at the airport. It’s a cliché about the taxi driver explaining his country to a foreign journalist, but the curious thing here was how different my driver’s attitude was from that of the thousands with whom I have spoken around the world for years. The usual thing is complaints, almost always from the pure capitalism that the solitary profession of taxi driver exemplifies. The one who touched me in Uruguay was, on top of that, a former soldier.
The furthest thing imaginable from a Vox or Trump voter, Claudio told me that he was very in favor of the recent arrival of Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants to his country (“they work hard and contribute a lot”) and he expanded proudly on what fraternal relations between opposition politicians and how honest the Uruguayan system is. While he was talking and talking, a phrase I once heard came to mind and I thought: Uruguay must be a country of moderate fanatics.
The meeting this week that brought together former presidents Mujica, Lacalle and Sanguinetti confirmed my impression. It was not the first that the three have celebrated in public nor will it be the last. Faced with general elections that will be held in October of this year, they have embarked on a kind of roadshow around their country. Although they differ in the recipes they propose for general well-being, the trio’s message is always the same. Mujica is from the left, Lacalle from the center-right and Sanguinetti something in between, but what they all have in common is the deep conviction that we must take care of Uruguayan democracy and avoid contagion from outside, especially that which comes from the other side of the Río de the Silver.
“The national commitment goes beyond party seals,” declared Mujica. “That’s why we are here, this kind of strange union that does not exist in any country in the world: to try to help the new generations and that, despite all the differences, they maintain their height and preserve that capital that I call ‘we’.” ”.
Lacalle Herrera recommended “the protagonists of the electoral campaign count up to 10 before answering something attributed to them or criticizing them.” And he added: “Those of us who are in the trade know that after the last weekend of November there will be a government that I hope I like… but, whether I like it or not, it is the government, and so let’s reserve a little for it.” of affection and respect.”
Sanguinetti, the first democratic president after a military dictatorship that fell in 1985, said he was “totally with his comrades.” “That is why we are here, so that we are not dragged along by the marginalities of the networks, the marginalities of politics, the marginalities of society, and that we discuss what we have to discuss, that the candidates discuss, that the parties, the parliamentarians discuss. and not let ourselves be dragged into all those side debates, which from the anonymity of the networks… from the viralization of a photo that now we do not know if it is real or if it was made with artificial intelligence, that we do not let ourselves be dragged into the debate by those forces and those phenomena that are there.”
I spoke with several Uruguayan experts, including Mujica himself, to tell me how they have managed to prevent politics from being reduced to a dirty game without rules in which the responsibility of governing for the common good becomes, as seems to be the case. Today in Spain, a secondary issue, almost forgotten.
The answers were three: Uruguayans do not invent unnecessary problems (I think of Spain and the dramas surrounding the Catalan independence movement); They patented social democracy in Latin America a hundred years ago (the Swedes came to learn from Uruguay), and they have lived for a long time in the most atheist country on the continent. As a happy consequence, they explained to me, in Uruguay they are not captives of those old absolutist mental habits, loaded with moral indignation, that characterize so many Spanish politicians, whether they are believers or not.
The Uruguayan experience was refreshing and that is why I returned to Spain a few days ago as I returned from Canada to the United States when I lived in Washington: with the feeling that I was returning to the jungle. To that I added, from my Spanish side, a sad mixture of envy and shame.
