The progressive cynicism with which artificial intelligence will be abused will test our ability to distinguish between truth and lies.
To prepare you, I propose here, dear readers, a small mental exercise.
Let's see if you know which of the following three phrases are fake and which are real.
Former Argentine presidents Alberto Fernández, Mauricio Macri and Cristina Kirchner appeared fraternally on stage this week to proclaim their repudiation of insults, lies and defamation in politics.
Former United States presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush came together smiling to express their repudiation of insults, lies and defamation in politics.
The former presidents of Uruguay José “Pepe” Mujica, Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera and Julio María Sanguinetti hugged before the television cameras and proclaimed their joint repudiation of insults, lies and defamation in politics.
He hoped that the majority were right: the first two are false;
the third is the good one.
The thing is that I have just traveled to Uruguay, a thirteen-hour flight to a better world, a country defined by the UN and others as the second in democracy, transparency and security on the American continent, after Canada.
The week I spent in Montevideo offered me a vision of democratic civilization deliciously foreign to the barbarism that consumes political discourse in Spain, where I live, in Argentina (obviously) and in the United States, whose Trumpist madness hypnotizes me.
The hackneyed word “polarization” falls short to describe what is being experienced in these three countries, not to mention the rest of Latin America and much of Europe.
In Uruguay, polarization would be an unknown phenomenon if it were not for the noisy neighbors on the other side of the river, or that some read the international sections of their newspapers.
What defines them there, I discovered, is consensus, a virtue they never stop boasting about.
I offer you as an example the taxi driver who picked me up at the airport.
It's a cliché about the taxi driver explaining his country to a foreign journalist, but the curious thing here was how different my driver's attitude was from that of the thousands with whom I have spoken around the world.
The usual thing is complaints, almost always from the pure capitalism that the solitary profession of taxi driver exemplifies.
My driver was, on top of that, a former soldier.
The furthest thing imaginable from a Peronist, or Vox, or Trump voter, Claudio told me that he was very much in favor of the recent arrival of Venezuelan immigrants to his country (“they work hard and contribute a lot”) and he expanded proudly on how friendly the relations between opposition politicians are and how honest the Uruguayan system is.
While he was talking and talking, a phrase that I once heard came to mind and I thought, Uruguay must be a country of moderate fanatics.
The meeting this week that brought together former presidents Mujica, Lacalle and Sanguinetti confirmed my impression.
It was not the first that the three friends have celebrated in public, nor will it be the last.
Faced with general elections that will be held in October of this year, they have embarked on a kind of road-show around their country.
Although they differ in the recipes they propose for general well-being, the trio's message is always the same.
Mujica is from the left, Lacalle from the center-right and Sanguinetti something in between, but what they all have in common is the deep conviction that Uruguayan democracy must be taken care of and contagion from outside must be avoided.
“The national commitment goes beyond party seals,” declared Mujica.
“That's why we are here, this kind of strange union that doesn't exist in any country in the world.”
Thinking, I suppose, of Javier Milei, Lacalle Herrera recommended “the protagonists of the electoral campaign count up to 10 before answering something attributed to them or criticizing them.”
And he added that "those of us who are in the trade know that after the last weekend of November there will be a government that I hope I like...but, whether I like it or not, it is the government, and so let's reserve a little for it." of affection and respect.”
Sanguinetti, the first democratic president after the military dictatorship that fell in 1985, said he was “totally with his comrades.”
“That is why we are here, so that we are not dragged by the marginalities of the networks, the marginalities of politics… and that we discuss what we have to discuss, that the candidates discuss, that the parties, the parliamentarians discuss and not allow ourselves to all be dragged along.” those lateral debates from the anonymity of the networks... of the viralization of a photo that now we do not know if it is real, or if it was made with artificial intelligence, that we do not allow ourselves to be dragged into the debate by those forces and those phenomena that are there ”.
I spoke to several Uruguayan experts to explain why their country is so admirably weird.
The responses were four: the incentive to avoid imitating the Argentine example at all costs;
Uruguayans do not invent unnecessary problems (I think of my beloved Spain and the dramas surrounding the Catalan independence movement);
They patented social democracy in Latin America a hundred years ago (the Swedes came to learn from Uruguay);
and they have lived for a long time in the least religious country on the continent.
As a happy consequence of their atheism, they explained to me, in Uruguay they are not captives of those ancient absolutist mental habits, loaded with moral indignation, that characterize so many politicians in Christian lands, whether they are believers or not.
I got on the plane back to Spain with the feeling that I was returning to the jungle;
I landed in Madrid with a sad mixture of envy and shame.
If I lived in Argentina I suspect I would feel something similar.