On the same day that the Parliament of Catalonia, with the intervention of five parliamentary groups, elevated soccer with buttons (a simulation of soccer played on a table) to the status of a sport, the Italian data protection agency requested the immediate blocking of the artificial intelligence (AI) model ChatGPT because it considers it to be a public danger. Really, the exception is this second decision, and the normal one, the first: that parliaments and governments manage the routine day to day as if the world were not on the threshold of a revolution that will leave millions of people marginalized and that has just ‘set fire to social coexistence.
On Friday itself, a few hours after the Italian regulator’s step forward was made public, it transpired that the United States company Domestika will lay off dozens of workers in Spain who have a job that the OpenAI platform can do perfectly.
It took a manifesto signed by more than a thousand people, among whom there are both philosophers and businessmen with responsibility for the origin of the creature, so that many people began to think that inventions like ChatGPT, or like the new search engine from Bing, they are not just entertainment anymore. Now it will be necessary to see how many countries or institutions follow in Italy’s footsteps.
Embracing the disruptive power of new AI assistants will require leaving behind old habits and concepts. It will have to be done, for example, by cities, which are the front line in this algorithmic conflict. It will be difficult to continue using the smart city concept without completely reformulating its content. Advances that were born to make citizens’ lives easier through AI-based urban solutions are more than ever under suspicion. Security cameras, sensors, robotic applications, in short, the unleashed algorithm suddenly seem to be part of the experiment that ChatGTP and other assistants are doing on a planetary scale. A test in which those who interact collaborate and correct the hallucinations.
The concept of smart citizen as opposed to smart city is not new. It began circulating in the late 2000s to define informed citizens who use technology to actively participate in their city’s decisions. An example of this 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 a step forward in this sense. Barcelona, ​​which has institutional tools such as the platform or the newly created municipal AI advisory council, is assuming 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 reflection on the implications of the dizzying development of AI, if this does not end up happening naturally due to the anxiety felt by the same thinkers invited to the festival
However, it should not be forgotten that the Catalan capital promoted, in 2017, a clear 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 warnings.
Parliaments must take care of day-to-day life and also promote people’s right to have fun, even when they try to imitate Leo Messi’s mistakes with their shirt buttons. But the threat that rears its head in our mobiles and computers is too terrifying to pretend it doesn’t exist.
