Last year it ended with the irruption of an artificial intelligence software emulator of the wise and dialogical HAL 9000 computer that appeared in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). It has spread with an unprecedented speed even in the world of the internet. After six weeks, one hundred million admirers had interacted with it and five million do so daily. Access is easy and you only need to open a free account in a period that the promoters consider to be testing. It is difficult to comment, without seeing it, such an amazing and almost magical artifact; you have to experience a dialogue with him to get an idea of ​​his scope. But it is easy to predict that it will change our lives. Because there are countless economic, educational, social and political activities that will inevitably change. And also unimaginable and surprising changes today. Perhaps it is not an exaggeration to equate its impact with that of the second invention of printing in the 15th century. It was the spreading and multiplying element of knowledge that made Europe grow and prevail in the world for centuries.
But this time the revolutionary innovation of inventiveness and European initiative does not emerge. For more than a decade in the United States and China, huge amounts of talent and capital have been invested in the development of artificial intelligence. The recently hatched software we are referring to, ChatGPT, created under the auspices of Microsoft, will face competition from similar ones promoted by Google (United States) and Baidu (China) and other competitors in power
None, as far as we know, from Europe.
Almost simultaneously, another more important, colossal achievement of artificial intelligence has been published: David Becker has announced that by means of an algorithm of his creation he has managed, together with his team in Seattle (USA), to reveal the three-dimensional structure of proteins. This has been, since the time of Linus Pauling (1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry), one of the most important challenges in biology. Protein design has unimaginable potential for all life on this planet. David Baker has published 550 scientific papers, registered more than one hundred patents and created 17 companies. However superhuman his talent was, it is clear that these achievements are only possible in an optimally favorable cultural, economic, administrative and political environment.
We will all soon be users, direct or indirect, of artificial intelligence. But it is those who create it who will lead the world, and accumulate political and economic power. Because it is not the same to be a user of innovations to improve the productivity of traditional activities (for example, computerizing processes, whether administrative or mechanical) as to be the creator of innovations (in this example, the manufacturers of computers and programs). The most serious consequence of being a user, even a creative one, of new technologies, without producing them, is unemployment: the use of new technologies tends to replace jobs; its production, to create in equal measure or more. For this reason, among other reasons, the Spanish economy, which absorbs and uses new technologies to modernize but does not produce them, suffers from chronic mass unemployment.
Two professors from the University of Alicante warn us of the risks of decline that Europe runs if it continues in the subordinate position of user of the new technology created in the United States and China, if it is not able to compete in production. Luis Moreno and Andrés Pedreño, both active technological entrepreneurs, as well as teachers, have published a very elaborate and extensive warning analysis on the multiple aspects of their innovation policy that Europe should reformulate to avoid decline. Decline will be that the public systems of pensions, healthcare and education can only be financed with debt and inflation due to insufficient tax revenues obtained in insufficiently efficient economies.
The conditions for business success in the age of artificial intelligence are similar in part to those that have characterized all eras of innovation and growth: strong synergies between research, education, active cooperation of powers and public administrations and entrepreneurial dynamism. The authors dedicate several incisive chapters to the success conditions of the new technological stage.
Europe seems to suffer from a secret resistance to innovation. It is something that needs to be emphasized in order to adequately assess its consequences. So the GPT Chat appeared, the pages of newspapers spilled with warnings and fears: “AI can undermine democracy†or “Catastrophic success†were prominent headlines!
Our authors ask themselves, with a hint of bitterness: what has had more impact on the life of the reader, and on their well-being, the advances that are brewing in California and increasingly in China, or the excellent and guarantor ethics European data protection?
Few more stimulating readings for those who decide on our future: Europe versus the US. and China. Preventing Decline in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (printed by Amazon).
