As we come to the end of the book, I hope you don’t feel less relevant in the face of the advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Remember, you are made of flesh and blood, not a collection of wires and assembled metals. What’s important is that we all understand the significance of the information that surrounds us and that we continuously generate by interacting with technology. You might be questioning how repetitive or cognitive your job is. Perhaps you consider yourself at an advantage in this regard and your questions revolve around what kind of AI-powered car you would prefer to use. The idea of this book was not to tell you what to think or do, but to help you think critically about these current issues so that more of us engage in the discussion. The more voices involved, the greater the chances that this future will be developed with a perspective that includes everyone, without creating first and second-class citizens. Shouldn’t human knowledge push each of us to be in a better place rather than leaving us out of the system? What place will humanity have in a world dominated by AI? For hundreds of years, we have lived in a routine system where we work primarily to survive. Today we face an existential crisis, one triggered by technological disruption, not just in the job market. AI will be a significant factor in defining the future of the evolution of life, and as Eliezer Yudkowsky argues, one of the greatest dangers of Artificial Intelligence is that people will conclude too quickly that they understand it[219], much like those who don’t consider themselves digitally illiterate simply because they know how to upload a photo to a social network.
This is an opportunity to ask ourselves what matters most in our lives. After all, AI, like money or the Internet, is just a tool created by humans. Each of us decides whether to use it for good or evil, even though these are relative concepts for each person. We must understand the opportunity this technological paradigm shift gives us to reflect on ourselves and our worldview, even bringing our social contract into the discussion. What form will this new contract take? Logically, Argentina’s social contract can be different from that of the United States, which will likely differ from China’s. What’s important is that we conceive it together. Today we have the opportunity to reimagine a new contract and begin to translate it into real actions. The most important thing, to overcome fear and focus on steering the ship, is to realize that the solutions to the most pressing problems we face already exist and are within reach. However, their implementation still faces scalability issues, and in some cases, drastic changes in our social and economic fabric will be needed.
If we analyze history from a materialistic perspective, like that of Marx, we would understand that social changes are influenced by class struggles and the production models society adopts as the basis of its organization. According to Marxist theory, humans have a series of material needs that we satisfy with our work by transforming nature. The foundation of history is, therefore, the economy. In its infrastructure, we can distinguish between its productive forces, the means of production, and the relations of production. Historically, these relations have revolved around those who own the means of production and those who only possess their labor power. For this school of thought, each historical formation is conceived as responsible for creating the conditions for a new one to replace it due to a constant conflict of interests between exploiters and exploited. But what worker revolution can we speak of if there are no workers left in the first place? As long as there are jobs, or we depend on them for our subsistence, the solution will most likely come from stakeholder capitalism and not from shareholder capitalism or communist recipes.
Perhaps the threat of a common enemy can be a great catalyst to unite forces on a global scale and set aside the selfishness of national political parties. In a way, with advances and setbacks, we have already done this with nuclear energy, and higher-level consensus continues to be sought to combat climate change effectively. Artificial Intelligence, beyond its countless benefits, can pose a new threat. Indeed, some conflicts are sometimes inevitable, and as we accept that technological advancement cannot be stopped, we accept the challenges that are coming. Every country needs a strategy to successfully navigate the AI era. The first to advance and achieve positive results, following investment, incentives, and appropriate policies, will be the ones who will try to set the new rules of the game, including those related to ethical issues. Therefore, as a society and a country, we must act now. After all, we must remember that when we talk about how to regulate AI, what it can respond to and what it cannot, the underlying discussion is about how to regulate society. It is not about regulating the machine but about regulating the human. Mind you, I don’t intend to be a distraction by asking us to pay attention to the advent of superintelligence. It’s real that there are other concerns that dominate the current agenda, and I don’t consider them less important, such as caring for our elders, the education and nutrition of our children, health, safety, and many other things. Still, we should start asking ourselves how we will organize as a society when the need for human labor has decreased or how we will achieve better continuous education that is affordable for everyone regardless of their geographical location, especially considering that we claim to be a federal country, yet problem-solving always happens in one city. Investment in education is fundamental for any society that wants to develop, wisely use its resources, and be competitive internationally, but primarily because education opens the door to solutions to problems we often don’t know we have. All these are valid questions, though perhaps we should start by solving the climate change problem if we want to have a future in the first place.
If you are a parent and believe it is essential for your child to learn programming and robotics, as well as to develop curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking, demand that the school teaches these. If you are a student reading this, ask your teachers to prepare you for the jobs of the future that do not yet exist. If you are a teacher, make sure to get on the AI boat right away and impart updated knowledge to your group of students. This is the best way to prepare the youth for a future marked by the rapid and constant advance of technology and the changes it produces. The time for studying and theorizing is running out. It’s time to start making decisions and putting the knowledge acquired into practice.
Future generations will have to live with the consequences of the decisions we are making today. There is no doubt that the world we live in is complex, but that does not mean our actions lack value. If properly organized, we have the power to change the course of governments, companies, and individual actions in matters that affect us all, such as reducing our environmental impact, building a safer and more equitable society in terms of opportunities for all, where tolerance and freedom prevail above all. No minority can be left out. Only if society is organized can it make decision-makers listen to us and take the necessary actions. Fortunately, history has shown us that these significant transformations are possible, as when, after World War II, the Bretton Woods agreements created the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Shortly after, the United Nations was created, and the welfare state began to expand rapidly worldwide. Another blink of an eye, and we saw the rise of the European Union, where many nation-states agreed to relinquish part of their sovereignty to create something better. The changes needed are achievable, no matter how big they are. It may take longer than expected; the pause may be difficult, but nothing is impossible. Change will come. Not because a small group of people wants it, but because it will be necessary for the majority. Today’s interconnected younger generations will drive these reforms in the real world.
The victory of science is indisputable. It is no longer useful to link medicine and food crops to religion. Science offers us more and better food, along with specialized medicine that developed the COVID-19 vaccine in record time, while the polio vaccine, which used to paralyze children, took 18 years to develop. Today, religions face a severe challenge in providing support and explaining the events of the natural and material world, as they currently only connect our faith with the beyond and the unknown.
As we pointed out earlier, the moment we admit that information processing is the source of intelligence, and therefore some appropriate computational system could be its engine, we must recognize the dilemma this entails. Because if we admit that we will continuously improve these systems, as we mentioned at the beginning of the book, and accept that the horizon of cognition likely far exceeds what we currently know, then we must admit that we are in the process of building some kind of God. Now would be a good time to ensure that this is a good God to live with.
The good, and also the bad, is that the AI we develop will only be as good as the data and instructions we provide it. The problem with AI is not that it turns against us but that it does exactly what we ask it to do without us being clear enough about the limits and variables it must obey. This means that if the information we feed it contains an error, as happened in the false missile detection crisis by the United States in 1980, and then by the Soviet Union in 1983, the disastrous response that an autonomous defense system could have provided could have resulted in a real tragedy. The same happens if our data contains any sexist, racist, or other bias because AI will pick up those patterns and exploit them even more. Therefore, we must choose first how we want the possible outcomes to be, for which we need modern legislation to regulate and correct the negative effects of these technologies for a fairer society, clearly understanding the diversity that makes us up and enriches us individually and collectively.
When thinking about new methods of wealth redistribution, Universal Basic Income is immediately mentioned. The idea is relatively simple to explain and consists of every citizen of a country receiving a stipend from the state. This stipend should be equal for everyone and should not create or impose obligations on those who receive it. We are not talking about a social plan, typical of the Welfare State we know today, or unemployment insurance, because these are only allocated to certain members of the population and not to the entire population. As it is understood, the distribution of UBI would not imply that the recipients have to train in something, nor should they commit to looking for a job. Another well-known alternative that I did not mention earlier is Universal Minimum Income (UMI). Those who support this alternative argue that in this case, the stipend would only be given to people who do not earn more than a floor that should be determined by governments. Some UMI advocates insist that this floor could not be set below US$10,000 annually; however, they do not clarify whether it should be the same for all countries, and that is a key issue to resolve since, while that amount may seem like little money in some places, in other countries, people live well with similar sums. The premise of those advocating for UBI or UMI with relatively low amounts is that this way, the working class will still be incentivized to seek jobs. But, will there be jobs?
Others, on the contrary, believe that this income should act as a replacement for lost income for workers, who should forget about trying to find a new job and become part of a hedonistic society where the only thing that matters is the here and now, allowing them to pursue their passions in life, which implies a massive cultural change.
The idea of UBI is intensely discussed by the millionaires of Silicon Valley, that is, the people who are helping to accelerate and bring us closer to the problem in the first place. They are aware of this and know that if things get out of control because of them, people could revolt against them just as they could against a government. While I am in favor of ensuring that everyone can meet their basic needs, I also have my doubts, as Yuval Noah Harari raises in his books, about whether UBI can really be the cure for all our problems or if accepting its premise would squander a unique opportunity to do something better for humanity. As Harari points out, AI will not only create a dramatically unequal society but will also create an unsustainable and unstable society if sufficient safety nets are not created. That is why the rich, rather than the governments, seem more concerned with finding an early solution to this potential problem. Where will governments get the money to sustain these redistributive policies in a world with unprecedented unemployment rates? The simple answer, according to the recipe glossary, is to go for the money of the winners of the AI revolution through new taxes. This math, as we have seen, does not add up.
Let’s consult Friedman once again. The free market in theory should self-correct, like a fairy tale from which nothing escapes. Unfortunately, these corrective forces can achieve little in an extractivist and consumerist economy now driven by the advance of Artificial Intelligence. It is likely that in a few years, if you want to get a new job, you will have to compete with a machine and many people trying to access that position. Will the one who charges less and works more win? That would not be meritocracy; it would be exploitation and would undermine workers’ rights. The problem is not that the pie, or the size of the economy, is bigger, but that its distribution is highly centralized in a highly inequitable way. Even those workers who are not quickly replaced will begin to be affected by automation. It is enough for another company in the sector to implement this type of technology to reduce its costs and become more efficient, knowing that this will increase its power in the market. This will reduce the bargaining power of our remaining worker, who is very likely to be displaced at some point. There is no doubt that we will see a large population mass competing for increasingly scarce jobs with lower pay and fewer rights.
While I have pointed out in several parts of the book that we have an opportunity to reinvent ourselves as humanity, I do not want to fall into the cliché of so many current authors who end up calling for a world with more love. Love and food or material needs have no more correlation than that between religion and a good wheat harvest this year. How can we forget that famous phrase immortalized by Juan Carlos Pugliese when, as Minister of Economy, in the middle of Argentina’s hyperinflation in 1989, he went to talk to various market actors? After his meeting, he went down in history by announcing that he “spoke to them with his heart, and they responded with their pockets.” However, “AI” in Chinese means “love.” Yes, AI or 爱, in Chinese translates to love. Perhaps, after all, love, that is, Artificial Intelligence, is the solution to all our problems, but it would be a sin to preach the end of history by saying that in the long term, everything will be resolved by natural forces. That is too liberal and unimaginative. No. Let us not be mere spectators of the history of AI; let us be its authors! Let us create a roadmap!
Who are you? Think about it for a second. What is your answer when you introduce yourself to someone for the first time? It is very likely that after saying your name and surname, you indicate your profession. Work has become another part of our routines, from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Some even say that work is not only a means to meet our human needs and desires through money, which we exchange for goods and services, but that it gives us something to live for. Some say it gives meaning to our lives. However, that is something new. It was not always so. The ancient aristocracy, enjoying their noble titles, is not remembered for working from dawn to dusk like peasants, but for their ability to read and narrate poetry, discuss art, philosophy, and political systems yet to exist. They enjoyed the highest social status, and no one labeled them as lazy. Not then, not now. As Professor Nick Bostrom told Andrés Oppenheimer in an interview, there already exists a social sector that does not work and is accepted by most of society. Students enjoy approval from much of society, and although they do not necessarily work, they lead purposeful lives. Although we have not analyzed it in depth, historically, working to live has been an indicator that someone belongs to a lower social class, while those with time to engage in recreational activities without being forced to work belong to the upper class, the aspirational class. With the right culture, a society in which humans do not work to guarantee their subsistence does not have to be bad; but conversely, with the wrong culture, a society without workers could be a hell.
Throughout this book, we have posed questions that neither Aristotle, Locke, Kant, nor Mill were able to resolve concretely. Who are we, then, to think we can solve them here? Skepticism is and will be our worst enemy. Lowering our hands and surrendering instead of opting for moral introspective reflection is not the solution. We must stop seeing Artificial Intelligence as a fashionable technology. We are not talking about the clothing industry. We are not talking about a new line of hamburgers from a fast-food chain. We are talking about a tool for design, exploration, and research. AI must be for us what the telescope was for Galileo, a tool that allows us to explore beyond our limits, generating new knowledge that will transform our worldview.
While the evolution of species is a slow process, material progress occurs in a non-linear way. What would someone from 1750 think if they traveled to the present? How would they mentally categorize the things they see? For this person, it would be synonymous with magic to have a phone that captures images and videos, also used to communicate with anyone in the world in real-time and access an amount of information that seems infinite. Not to mention what they would think about the International Space Station, the internet, the Large Hadron Collider, TikTok, Pokémon Go, memes, Tinder, September 11, or the potato peeler. The only other possible comparison for such a shock would be if a nomad from 2000 BC traveled to 1750 to see the advances of the industrial revolution, its cities, empires, ships, carriages, money, taxes, and books. People think linearly, not exponentially. Our speed in reading books and absorbing content cannot even attempt to approach the speed at which AI can do it, advancing faster to the next level.
An AI today can identify a pedestrian in a given scenario, but it does not know what a pedestrian is. It recognizes it by its silhouette, lines, texture, temperature, movement, and more, but it does not know what a human really is. It is important to remember this because it is very easy to accidentally give an AI the wrong problem to solve, and we often won’t realize it until it’s too late. It is therefore crucial that the main artificial intelligences developed share our values to reduce the risk of committing acts that we consider harmful due to a poorly given command. It will be only through the information we provide that we will lead it to do something we consider wrong. Paradoxical, at the very least. How important Asimov’s three laws for robots become! In a short story called “Runaround” Asimov established the following set of fictional laws:
- A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
For all these reasons, we must demand standards, clear responsibilities, and transparency in AI systems. This is not about imposing bureaucracy, which sometimes works poorly, but about demanding clear regulations in this regard. It is okay to be a little skeptical. If the Nation-State, in its transformation into the Virtual State, does not update its instruments and provide better results to its population, it may become an irrelevant actor in the face of new technologies that challenge its sovereignty and the stability of its internal markets, like cryptocurrencies.
Let us not fall into the trap of believing that as humans, we are irreplaceable in an increasingly technologically equipped and knowledge-oriented productive matrix. Do we even know if the reduction in available jobs can impact the demographic rate? In the past, when cars replaced horses and when the manual plow was replaced by tractors, the need for horses decreased, causing a global collapse in the equine population. By 1915, the United States had 26 million horses, while in 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of that country, similar to our National Administration of Medicines, Food and Medical Technology (ANMAT) in Argentina, estimated that their population had dropped to 3.8 million. Could something similar happen to us as automation takes away our job opportunities?
In the long run, it is very likely that replacing humans with robots in the workforce will be one of the most ethical things we can do. It is true that in the current social organization model, work is considered dignifying, but perhaps progress can be contemplated from other variables if we change our understanding of it. Thinking about stopping progress would be childish, unnatural, and unethical if we understand it as the improvement or advancement experienced by a person or thing toward a higher state.
Without further ado, what I offer here is a new narrative because I believe we need it. We are beings who tell stories and build around them. Narratives allow us to communicate and convey an interpretation that gives meaning to our lives within a given context. Narratives are responsible for moving society forward in any historical period. We live in times of unprecedented changes, where in a decade we can witness events that used to take a century. Pandemics and major revolutions, like the one triggered by that abstract thing we have decided to call Artificial Intelligence, tend to produce shocks and exacerbate the problems we face today, such as wars, inequality, the breakdown of the social fabric, political turmoil, interruptions in the mass-use goods logistics chain, and much more. Still, pandemics and major revolutions throughout history have had the power to generate notable radical changes. This time does not have to be the exception. A good narrative can have the power to show us what lies ahead and how we should respond to it. Unlike stories, however, the final outcome of a narrative remains open as it depends on what you and the rest of society do about it. Only through narrative and the actions that stem from it can we convince others of which path to follow. We must take risks and jump over the wall. A ship in the harbor is safe, but it was made to sail[220]. This adventurous spirit of humans has allowed us to discover new places, overcome crises, find cures, and even reach the Moon or send a robot to Mars.
As this is the first book I write, I feel the closing should be somewhat personal. While I have already shared some conclusions, there are others that I will leave to your own consideration. I sincerely hope that what you have read here has been easy to understand and, above all, useful, perhaps inviting you to think about topics you had not considered before.
That said, and to conclude, we all know that Charles Chaplin gave magnificent performances, and I have always liked his speech at the end of the movie “The Great Dictator”, as I find it simply one of the strongest messages in human history. Coincidentally, with very few changes, his speech serves as the perfect ending for this book, so if you allow me a little more of your time, I invite you to read the following adaptation of that memorable speech and let us take charge of our freedom, as no one will grant it to us if we do not seek it ourselves.
(…) We have to help each other. Human beings are like that. We want to make others happy, not celebrate their misfortune. We do not want to hate or despise anyone. There is room for everyone in this world, and the Earth is rich and can provide for all.
The path of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost our way. Greed has poisoned our souls, erected barriers of hate, and pushed us into misery and bloodshed.
We have progressed rapidly, but we have imprisoned ourselves. Today, machines that create abundance leave us in need. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our intelligence has made us hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little.
More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent, and all will be lost.
The airplanes, radio, and the internet bring us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in humans, demanding universal brotherhood that unites us all.
Right now, my voice is reaching millions of people around the world, millions of desperate people, adults, young people, and children. Victims of a system that imprisons them in realities they do not desire.
To those who can hear me, I say: do not despair. The misery we suffer is but the passing greed and bitterness of those who fear to follow the path of human progress.
The hate of men will pass, and dictators will fall, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Let us not yield to the misuse of AI algorithms! Those who misuse them despise us, enslave us, regulate our lives, and tell us what to do, think, and feel.
Do not give yourselves to these inhuman systems, to machine-men with machine minds and machine hearts.
We are not machines; we are not cattle. We are human beings. We carry the love of humanity in our hearts, not hate. Only those who do not love, hate. Those who do not love and the inhuman.
Let us fight for freedom, not for slavery, for open and shared Artificial Intelligence!
We, the people, have the power. The power to create machines, the power to create happiness. We, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make it a wonderful adventure.
In the name of democracy and progress, let us use that power by acting all together. Let us fight for a new, dignified, and noble world that guarantees people happiness, youth a future, and old age security.
With the promise of these actions, old and new dictators reached and will reach power. But they lie. They have not kept their promises, nor will they ever. Dictators free themselves but not the rest. They enslave their people.
So let us fight now to make the promised reality. Let us all fight to free the world. To eliminate greed, hate, and intolerance.
Let us fight for the world of reason. A world where science and progress lead us all to happiness.
Artificial Intelligence is our new Manhattan Project. Not because its power is destructive, but because it is a technology of such power that it forces us to discuss its present and future use. The only difference is that, unlike other major human projects, this one can still represent a script written and agreed upon by many more hands. The leadership we are building is distributed and decentralized. That means our wishes, voices, and ideas for a new world cannot be silenced. Taking one person out of the picture is easy; an idea is not. It will be the role of our lives. I wouldn’t miss it.
[219] Yudkowsky, E. (2008). Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk. Viewed March 19, 2023, at https://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf.
[220] Cuarteto de Nos (2019). Tiburones en el bosque [Song]. In Jueves. Sony Music.