Artificial and Natural Intelligence

This year, whose end is approaching, has been marked by an expression and the corresponding acronym. Artificial intelligence or AI has been regularly included in the titles of news pieces, opinion articles, scientific and academic writings, both national and international, both in specialty and generalist publications. It seems clear that it is a topic that arouses intense reactions, alternating between hysteria or enthusiasm, a more moderate and healthy version of the former, and concern or even fear.

I admit to feeling ambivalent about it myself. However, I have tried to normalise what I feel and what I think because, after all, we have been surrounded by this type of intelligence for some time now: keyboards that "guess" what we want to write; search engines that know what we want to look for; suggestions for answers to e-mails that were found before we read them; our telephone that "knows" where we are going next; cars that warn us if we are over the speed limit or the lines that mark a carriageway and can now drive us practically without our intervention. These are just a few examples among many others present in our daily lives. AI has inevitably been with us for much longer than we tend to acknowledge and, in fact, the most recent developments and the prospects for significant advances in the short term seem to have given it a greater flash and great visibility.

As with many other themes, science fiction has allowed us to envisage several possible scenarios where the effects, dangers and advantages of AI are safely explored. Just bring to mind works like "2001: Space Odyssey", the "Terminator" film saga, the "Matrix" or "Her: A Love Story", to name but a few. There is something common in all these works of cinema and in many others in literature: artificial intelligence seeks to destroy or replace natural intelligence, or at least human intelligence. In these works, intelligent machines become aware of the imperfection, unpredictability and susceptibility to failure caused by people and, seeking to eliminate these factors, come to the conclusion that the best thing would be to eliminate humans themselves or to reduce them to a sub-human condition. It is paradoxical that something that is not found in the natural world and exists only because it is created by humans - a possible definition of artificial - can come to such a conclusion. Basically, we come to the old and well-known complex in which the created supplants and annihilates the creator.

The topic and its implications are vast and can easily be associated with the world of work. It is already difficult to count the professions and activities in which human intervention is no longer necessary or has lost relevance in a significant way due to the increasingly evolved and sophisticated intelligence of the machines we create. It is believed that the trend will continue in this direction and the list of people and tasks that will be replaced by "intelligent machines" keeps growing. Fortunately, much of the best human intelligence has been used to anticipate and propose alternative paths to challenges that already exist and others that are not yet part of reality.

It is important not to forget that all that is artificial, including intelligence, is the result of the inventive and creative capacities of our species. It is essential to remember that of all the inhabitants of our planet we are the ones who have altered and will continue to alter Nature the most. Maybe it is because we know that we are like that, even if sometimes we don't want to know, that we feel fear in relation to AI. I believe that, deep down, this fear is about ourselves, about our own nature that, despite all the changes, has not changed that much.

For all this, I am convinced that we are living in a time that presents us with a unique opportunity to get closer to our nature; to recover and discover better ways of relating to each other, to what surrounds us and to the world that contains us. Perhaps it will not be with the machines that we create that we will have to face, even because, for now, we can turn them off...

Written for Link to Leaders on 20 October 2017