On the same day that the Parliament of Catalonia, with the intervention of five parliamentary groups, elevated soccer with buttons (a football simulation played on a table) to the status of a sport, the Italian Data Protection Agency requested the blocking of the ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence (AI) model as it is considered a public danger.
In reality, the second thing is the exception and, normally, the first: that parliaments and governments manage the day-to-day routine as if the world were not at the gates of a revolution that is going to leave millions of people in the ditch and that will end up setting fire to social coexistence.
On the same Friday, a few hours after the announcement of the Italian regulator’s leadership, it transpired that the American company Domestika is going to lay off dozens of workers in Spain whose work can be carried out perfectly by the OpenAI platform.
It took a manifesto signed by more than a thousand people, including both philosophers and businessmen responsible for the origin of the creature, for many people to begin to believe that inventions such as ChatGPT, or the new Bing search engine, are not They are just another entertainment. Now it will be necessary to see how many countries or institutions follow in the footsteps of Italy.
Embracing the disruptive power of the new AI assistants is going to require letting go of old habits and concepts. For example, in cities, which are the front lines in this algorithmic conflict. It will be difficult to continue using the smart city concept without completely reformulating its content. The advances that were born to make life easier for citizens through urban solutions based on AI are more than ever under suspicion. Security cameras, sensors, robotic applications, in short, the unleashed algorithm seem to suddenly form part of the experiment that ChatGTP and other assistants are carrying out on a planetary scale. A test in which those of us who interact with them collaborate and correct their hallucinations.
The concept of a smart citizen as opposed to that of a smart city is not new. It began to circulate in the late 2000s to define the informed citizenry who uses technology to actively participate in the decisions of their city. An example is the participatory democracy or data sovereignty processes recently developed in Barcelona and other cities. But the need for smart citizens now makes more sense than ever.
The step forward taken by the promoters of the Catalan platform CIVICAi, in favor of a civic development of artificial intelligence, is progress in this regard. Barcelona, ​​which has institutional tools such as the Digital Future Society platform or the recently created AI municipal advisory council, is called upon to assume a leading role in the field of technological humanism. It also brings together industry (Mobile World Congress, ISE, startups…) and leading think tanks and research centers.
Perhaps it would be time to reorient the successful Biennale del Pensament towards reflecting on the implications of the dizzying development of AI, if this does not end up happening naturally due to the anguish that the thinkers themselves invited to the festival must feel. .
In addition to all this, it should not be forgotten that the Catalan capital gave birth, in 2017, to an illustrious Barcelona Declaration that laid the foundations for civic and regulatory resistance to the reckless development of a potentially dangerous technology.
It was one of the first notices.
Parliaments have to deal with day to day and also promote the right of people to have fun, also trying to imitate Leo Messi’s free kicks with the button on his shirt. But the threat looming over our phones and computers is too terrifying to pretend it doesn’t exist.
