When one hears about AI on television or the radio, it is mainly great news predicting a promising future, often close to science fiction utopias. Humans seldom prioritize reason over the unstoppable advance of technology. It's common to see ourselves so overwhelmed by the amount of good news about a novelty that we can lose that analytical part, necessary to get the best out of this novelty without it ending up being detrimental to everyone.
José María Lassalle is a prominent academic, politician, and Spanish writer who understands the seriousness of this issue. He was Secretary of State for Culture from 2011 to 2016 and Secretary of State for the Information Society and Digital Agenda from 2016 to 2018, during the governments of the Popular Party. Additionally, he is the author of several essays on political philosophy and technology. Known for his contributions to digital rights, artificial intelligence, and the impact of technology on society, the academic shared his vision of current times and how we should approach these new technologies during his talk at PROA's offices to Insights.
It's Not a New Problem
Contrary to common belief, AI is not a novel invention by OpenAI from a few years ago, but an invention that notable figures such as Alan Turing were already working on more than 70 years ago. The mathematician's name itself is used to refer to the famous Turing test, a test created to detect a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to or indistinguishable from that of a human.
However, this technology began to develop years ago, around 2008, due to a shift in the capitalist system. "We moved from a production-centered capitalism to a cognitive capitalism, focused on using knowledge and data to anticipate and/or generate consumer needs," explains the Cantabrian academic. This shift in understanding the system required technologies such as databases, algorithms, and AI to process the massive amount of information needed to anticipate desire. With the help of data provided by hundreds of millions of electronic devices, it is possible to explore the needs of almost anyone.
This starting gun for developing increasingly advanced AI (also outside of big data processing) was always driven by a utopian idea, which for Lassalle is "the intention to replicate the human brain without its imperfections." These would be what we know as errors or the influence of emotions, the most human elements that separate us from machines. With new advancements in the sector appearing almost daily, the view of AI as a work tool has already become established in many professions. Although it's only a matter of time before its relentless progress surpasses the limit of being a tool and becomes the doer of the work itself.
"We are not facing a facilitating technology like the locomotive or the steam engine, but a potentially substitutive one. This tries to imitate human thinking and directly affects social and work dynamics," the speaker concluded.
Forecasts
The progress and expectations of AI are such that entities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) assure that by 2094, humans will be replaced in all current tasks. On the other hand, companies like OpenAI also speculate that by 2033 (less than 10 years), 80% of professional tasks will be affected by AI, "it will be a tool that conditions work," added Lassalle. Countries like China claim that by 2050 they will achieve an AI strong and complex enough to create mental states, increasingly blurring the line between human and machine.
Given this scenario, Lassalle stated that "we have 70 years to find what value makes us irreplaceable by a machine." For the academic, the answer to this question lies in the human being itself, who must once again become "the measure of all things."
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What Do We Do?
Faced with technology running wild in its evolutionary frenzy, the only viable solution is a "reconciliation with the human." For the speaker, it's essential to revalue the human factor in understanding new technology. For this, it is vital to "develop a philosophy and an ethics focused on purpose rather than risks." Thinking about what purpose a technology has, rather than what possible risks creating it might have, can allow for greater human control over technology, something increasingly complex in a world where numbers dictate actions.
To develop this ethics, Lassalle believes it is necessary to promote education in critical thinking among the youngest. Fostering the development of curious but independent minds capable of engaging in necessary ethical debates when promoting technology. In this way, we can create "a humanistic superstructure" that contains, as much as possible, the technical structure.
Technical development without the perspective and influence of the humanistic is doomed to turn against the individual, so a return to an education centered on the human is essential to ensure this technology does not replace us. As Lassalle quoted at the end of the talk, "the best engineer is one who is something more than just an engineer."
