In May last year, 350 global experts in artificial intelligence (AI) signed a document in which they warned that the technology could lead to the end of civilization and the extinction of humanity.
Since then, and with growing alarm, the issue has not stopped being debated.
What we don't ask ourselves so much is whether HI (human intelligence) represents a greater danger.
Yes, contrary to what is so feared, perhaps the time has come to explore the option of a big reset and let the AI take over.
It wouldn't necessarily make it worse.
We just have to remember the horrors committed in the 20th century in the name of those ideas to create heaven on Earth.
I recommend a short scene (you can see it on YouTube) from the movie 'The Fifth Element'.
We see the protagonist Leeloo, a perfect but innocent being, crying in front of a screen in which she sees a sequence of “flash” images of wars that include planes bombing cities, atomic explosions, extermination camps and refugees parading through rubble.
Today's images in Gaza or Ukraine offer variations on the same thing.
The constant, since history began to be written, is death, plunder and destruction in the name of the tribe - always the tribe - represented by the flag, or the King, or God, or purifying ideologies, such as communism, fascism, Nazism and ubiquitous nationalism.
One of the attractions of AI as an alternative to govern the destiny of the world is that it would be many things but it would not be tribal, it would not succumb to the system of social organization invented by the IH that is the main cause of our ills.
Nor will he be swayed by the demagogues to whom we are so susceptible.
Hitler, Stalin and their imitators appeal to emotion, a quality that AI lacks.
If we let it act alone, without human interference, its decisions will be based on reason.
Less wars and savagery, we might suppose.
And perhaps less, not more, possibility of extinction.
What do we know with certainty are the main threats to the survival of humans as a species?
Climate change and nuclear war.
Well, we have arrived here thanks to the benefits of the IH.
AI has had nothing to do with global warming or the perfectly imaginable possibility of nuclear war.
There is no reason to think that a world where AI rules would accelerate the possibility of burning us alive in one way or another.
On the contrary.
If reason were the driving force instead of emotion (hatred, resentment, revenge, envy or inferiority complexes), there would be a greater chance of being safe.
It is difficult not to suspect that AI would represent a better bet than IH.
Of course, if what experts fear comes true, if robots usurp command of the ship, as the famous movie '2001: A Space Odyssey' envisions, we would have to subordinate ourselves to their authority and say goodbye to the least bad invention with which we have given, the one that imposes a certain sanity, decency and justice on the volatile human condition.
I mean democracy.
I am a big fan of democracy, a big defender of it against authoritarianism.
After access to food and other basic needs for survival, freedom of expression is what I value most.
I prefer to live in a society where I am allowed to say and do what I want under the control and protection of the law than another, like Russia or China or Iran, where the whim of the boss is enough to put me in prison or end my life.
But, let's be honest.
Democracy, or what we understand by democracy in Western countries, is not going very well these days.
First, it is not always the most appropriate system for all societies;
It is not a suit that suits everyone in all circumstances.
Second, it turns out that even in countries where democracy is more consolidated, the system is beginning to corrode.
It is being shown that the right to vote, a novelty - let us remember - in long human history, does not necessarily give the best results, measured in social peace and citizen well-being.
Let's look at the cases of the two oldest democracies.
In the United Kingdom the majority voted for Brexit;
In the United States they are close to voting for Donald Trump as president for the second time.
AI, coldly based on facts and not misleading nationalist frivolities, would never have recommended Brexit.
Nor would I have identified a crazy criminal like Trump or, for that matter, an increasingly senile old man like Joseph Biden as a worthy leader of the most powerful country in the world.
Only IH, too often synonymous with EH (human stupidity), is capable of such nonsense.
Having said all that, I don't know if I would be willing
to sacrifice my autonomy as a human being for the relative peace of mind of a world run by AI.
I say the freedom to enjoy music, painting, literature, beauty in all its expressions, the pleasures and dangers that life as we know it entails, for all of which it is necessary that we be a species with a strong component of irrationality.
The best feeds on the worst.
Remember the famous quote from the movie “The Third Man”:
“In Italy, in 30 years of Borgia domination there was nothing but terror, wars and massacres, but Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance emerged.
In Switzerland, on the other hand, they had 500 years of love, democracy and peace.
And what was the result?
The cuckoo clock.
A world under the authority of AI may give us the predictable serenity of the cuckoo clock.
But I prefer to take a chance on the IH, even if it means that we continue to suffer the disasters of war, or that
the end of the world is just around the corner.