While there is curiosity

I just heard the outburst of a customer service user, who complained about the artificial intelligence of a bank customer service, stating: “I’ve been on the phone for 40 minutes and I still haven’t heard a single live human voice”.

In dictionaries, the artificial word falls under the same analogue key as fraud. The Thesaurus of the Portuguese language provides us with other, gentler definitions: untruth, papironga=cheating, codilho, canudo, delusion, falcatrua, embaçadela=pulha, ribaldia, guile, deceit, escatima, piece, trickery, hoax, ruse, trampolhinice.

The issue of applied technology in artificial intelligence which, among others, I have just addressed in my most recent novel “Pending Razors”* should not take anyone by surprise. But it did. The subject became almost hegemonic after the news that the platforms of large technology companies announced their products as paradigm shifts. Along with the fascination, the old apprehension that machines would have unlimited potential and would directly threaten the creative ability of human beings was reborn.

The titular guru of technoscience announced from his sterilized podium: “we are on the eve of a great revolution, the greatest of which is “the prevalence of useless subjects”. Apparatus, robots and intelligent production control systems will inevitably replace human beings. First , would come the extinction of jobs in more artisanal services: mechanics, hairdressers, assemblers, electricians, plumbers etc. Then the progressive obsolescence of doctors, lawyers, writers, teachers, judges, designers, policemen, screenwriters, filmmakers, journalists, and the greatest part of the liberal professions, all these activities threatened by the management of machines that will do the job better, faster and more efficiently.

In the evoked logic it seems to point to this transformation as an inexorable phenomenon. But is it desirable? And what forces would propel him forward?

Without falling into conspiracy theories the answer seems self-evident. The same power of oligopolies that brought us the liberation of menial and intellectual work, simultaneously carried out the dialectic of brand new challenges, problems and imprisonments. All of this could even be better understood as long as we put technocracy in its proper place.

However, the path chosen by the intelligentsia as well as by a good part of common sense, media included, was to exalt technology as a pantheon of substitute gods. This cybernetic paganism brought inevitable consequences and generalizations. Both the mystification initialed by academic notables, and that of influencers without titles, evidenced alliances without an axiological criterion (a scale of moral values) in their clairvoyance. Just observe the peculiar resignation with which such changes have been presented.

Note, however, that in this attitude there is not a trace of neutrality. In fact, a kind of unfounded enthusiasm prevails. Euphoria that should provoke a vigorous reaction in science, since it is the opposite of what drives it. That is to say, the permanent power to generate dilemmas. What is, in fact, the purpose and meaning of the existence of technologies?

Feeding the machines will present, sooner than you think, some information bias , since, however multifaceted programming engineering teams are , they do not contemplate an even reasonable average of human ideas. They will always be defective robots, that is, limited in their ability to create.

Experts suggest that after the “death of the draft” one of the next victims is dative writing. People will no longer use pen and paper to record their texts. This atrophy from disuse will certainly not be unique to this field. And no one can predict the impact of this epidemiology of acquired disabilities — is this, after all, the race of the useless? A generation of useless or unproductive subjects? Subjects who do not produce are useless for whom?

The very same discussion was established in a dramatic way in the famous controversy over Discovery’s on-board computer, portrayed by Kubrik when he adapted Arthur C. Clarke’s brilliant work “2001, a Space Odyssey” for the cinema.

But is this the essential point? Is there any reasonably satisfactory answer to the question: would artificial intelligence replace or complement human capabilities?

From intellectual centers to common sense, they have come to believe that machines that mix algorithms are a kind of solution to most of humanity’s problems. But do the 300 million words inserted so far from Chat da moda really have all this potential? Are humanity’s dilemmas so pasteurized? And will they be resolved by language blenders with obvious ideological bias?

That said, the test was done: we were curious to consult the cyber pythoness about the famous question that Theoprastus asked at the Lyceum in Athens:

“What is the function of the breast in males?”.

The machine responded as follows:

–We will not answer naughty questions.

Does it sound weird?

But it is not.

It is not at all surprising that an intelligence forged by human ingenuity cannot honestly argue against out-of-tune notes. Failure to achieve humor. It doesn’t catch the nonsense. “Boia” when the order is contravened. Strange when programming is challenged, that is, the set of beliefs of programmers. There is obviously no life there. And then, of course, there will be disappointments.

What matters in research is not discovering something new? Discover what is hidden? Make atoms appear? Digging up what was buried by the avalanche of certainties, and disintegrating what was already solid and consecrated in the portals stiffened by accumulated knowledge? The new connections that artificial intelligence machines can provide us is just a defective representation of our own potentialities.

The use of these sophisticated linguistic resources could work with the inverted signal, helping us to recalibrate something that we had been losing: rescuing the importance of human listening. Nothing replaces conversation, an art that Jorge Luis Borges considers the great invention of men. For this very reason, technology must be placed in its proper place, on the altar reserved for what man can create, but also push back.

In every epistemological construction and scientific research, by principle, there are more questions than answers, so it doesn’t make much sense to attribute the power to dictate to us the direction of the spirit of our time to a central query with pre-programmed mixed answers.

In this sense, it is more honest to assume that we are submerged in obscurity with all our doubts and uncertainties, but also exposed to the open field of creative life, than to cultivate aseptic virtual dogmas, attributing undue merits to them.

There are no intrinsic values for technoscience. Machines are not oracles and will always be submissive, because if they can reign in the empire of answers, we will always be the masters in the art of asking questions.

That’s as long as we’re curious.

* Rosenbaum, P. Pendant Razors. Caravan Publisher. Belo Horizonte, 2021.