We are witnessing technological development with a great impact on societies where one of the fundamental technologies is artificial intelligence and the entire technological ecosystem that surrounds it.
Editorial
The emergence of different platforms has shown millions of users the capacity of AI to execute increasingly complex tasks. Its implementation, it has been estimated, will affect 60% of jobs in the richest countries. It is also predicted that in three years, 90% of internet content will be generated by AI. Significant data to consider.
In the last issue of the magazine Autogestion, we pointed out the great danger posed by the uncritical assumption of these technologies, and the currents that accompany them, which seek to undervalue, despise, subjugate, and colonize humans, to increase the business and power of a few. The implementation of these technologies has some characteristics with immediate and important political and social consequences: They are in general use, evolve at breakneck speed, have unequal (asymmetric) impact, are not neutral, and are increasingly autonomous.
First, they are of general (universal) use, thus facilitating social control. This use ranges from the most precise (biometric) biology of each person to the prediction of behaviors by states and large digital business emporiums. Business and control.
Secondly, they are evolving at such a great speed that political regulations, with their slow pace, are unable to take the lead or the initiative to a practical universal imposition of these technologies.
Thirdly, their implementation is asymmetrical, leaving millions of discarded people in the gutter of history.
They use the impoverished to feed their databases and test algorithms with slaves, they are tested in zones of war and violence, and at the same time, they encourage the spread of the culture of leisure with the new networks (games, porn, online platforms, etc.). And yet, as we say, they exponentially favor a few who are at the top of the profit pyramid.
Nor are they neutral in origin. They are financed by AI capitalism «or surveillance capitalism». Some point out that this new world order is similar to feudalism, with serfs and lords. And the lords would be, in this case, half a dozen large U.S. corporations and the Chinese Communist Party (with its business network).
They enjoy a certain autonomy; algorithms evolve with human interactions, feed on different experiences, and generate their evolution and dynamics. But who controls the black box of these tools and evolutions?
Faced with this situation, no false answers can be given. Longtermism, which consists of focusing the debate on issues that are not scientifically proven and belong more to the realm of belief (new technological faith), while the important issues that are already happening are ignored from the political agenda, is not valid. Neither is valid for those who claim their partial group or identity rights. We refer to those that place a postmodern emphasis on fluid, group (power), and highly individualistic identities and are strongly compatible with neoliberal ideology. This tactic is used by many organizations that claim to challenge the AI and its institutional framework, but do not want to see the «elephant in the room».
As the Pope denounced in his message on AI last January 1: «The human being, mortal by definition, thinking of surpassing every limit thanks to technology, runs the risk, in the obsession of wanting to control everything, of losing control of himself, and in the search for absolute freedom, of falling into the spiral of a technological dictatorship.»
We have to say that all this technological wealth has been and is the fruit of human effort, where the poorest are the ones who have put the most into the foundations of this knowledge. Justice must restore what has been stolen, what has been appropriated for a few at the expense of this effort and sacrifice of the poorest. And it is also necessary that the political management of this revolution be placed in the hands of those who continue to be trampled by the various «technological waves».
We also appeal to the responsibility of individuals and associations to face this situation. And of course, to the responsibility of technicians, to their professional vocation linked to the vocation to justice, and their perception and response to the institutional framework that surrounds them.