“A reflection on the dangers of Artificial Intelligence and on our future“
I am worried. Decidedly worried. I am mainly worried about myself, I admit it. For my future, for that of my family, my friends, of humans in general.
What is patently happening before our eyes is an unprecedented transformation in the history of the development of society and of the human being. It is not a random transformation, but a programmed one. By whom, at least for the moment, it is not given to know. Or rather, there are some who evidently know something, perhaps because they have been made aware of it by others, and every now and then they let slip shreds of truth. Particularly discussed by us here in Italialand is the case of the former Minister for the “Ecological Transition”, Roberto Cingolani.
My worry has a first and last name: the dangers of Artificial Intelligence. AI, that is Artificial Intelligence (to look good with the industry experts). Now I am not going to give the whole history and chronicle of this marvel of engineering here, partly because besides being extremely long it is also very complicated. This “little” article of mine would not be enough to describe its genesis and development. For those who are curious, they can try to navigate this complex field by reading this excellent popular science article.
The illusion of convenience: from the mobile phone to Artificial Intelligence
The fact remains that as of 2022, that is a few seconds ago if we were to put the development of human engineering and technology on a linear timeline, the dance has officially begun concerning what, in my opinion, will be the greatest and most dangerous (for mankind) evolution towards the “future”.
To tell the truth, this is one of the most difficult articles I have written. I started examining and “collecting” material as far back as May 2021 (more than 80 articles and conferences read and followed on the subject. I have put many links in this piece, but only to make you understand how difficult the threads of the cobweb are to untangle. If you want, you can even choose not to visit them).
Since then, little by little, I have realised that, like the “scamdemic” (Pandeminchia in the original text), the increasingly discussed topic of AI also had to do with the radical transformation of our world that was decided well in advance by the usual suspects. In this case, it concerns technology and the use thereof which entails, like a Trojan horse, a mortal danger within.
On principle, I am not against technological innovation, quite the contrary.
The mobile phone, the real novelty of my generation (and previous ones) has been an absolute revolution both in the way we communicate and in social behaviour.
Like many my age, I was initially reluctant to abandon good old answering machines, first tape-based, then digital. Then convenience took the upper hand and I yielded to the use of this box that has enslaved us. As Horace wrote in the second book of his Epistles: “Graecia capta ferum victōrem cepit” (that is, Greece, conquered [by the Romans], conquered the savage victor).
The problem does not lie in the technology itself, but rather in the use made of it. In this case, it is a one-way use, where the upper hand has been taken (not by chance) by the side of those who “offer” the service, namely the “system”.
In reality, the user, who believes himself to be free, is used through this object (be it a mobile phone or a computer) which, as I have written several times already, is the most powerful weapon of coercion ever used by any dictatorship in any age. More than rifles, more than threats, more than blackmail. On the contrary, the blackmailed party is happy to be so, to the point of yearning for the instrument of his slavery, paying a high price for it to his slave driver. The latter, through his industry, continually churns out this instrument of torture and coercion in new versions, ever more sophisticated and ever more captivating in the eyes of the slave.
Never in the history of humanity had a more diabolical idea been seen to subjugate the bodies and spirits of men. Not even Pol Pot managed as much. Among the atrocities committed by him and the Khmer Rouge, it is said he made relatives pay for the bullets with which he executed his victims. Here, conversely, it is the victims who pay voluntarily.
From making a phone call (which as an old advertising slogan went, could lengthen your life) to being profiled and monitored in the truest sense of the word through this cursed little box, was a matter of moments. In no time at all, the magic box turned into an extremely powerful tool of control.
The same concept applies to AI. Who would not like to have at their disposal a machine that could solve all problems and the most difficult tasks in real time? A sort of “Aladdin’s lamp” that you just need to ask to get what you want.
But is that really how things stand? I should say not!
Generative AI, first of all, is a double-edged sword, especially in its applications such as ChatGPT and the like (they vary from company to company, although the OpenAI version is best known to the general public).
Catherine Austin Fitts warned well about the danger of this technology; she became known to the general public outside the American banking and administrative world from the period of the “scamdemic”, when she gave an interview precisely about what was happening and what the so-called global “deep State” had programmed for the masses.
In practice, through the use of ChatGPT, active and passive control over the masses will be extremely easy.
On top of this, how is one to distinguish reality from the digital lie? Already, videos are circulating on the Web, entirely made by AI, with real-life historical figures speaking and discussing completely reinvented “historical” events. The main targets of such videos are young people, those who most believe in the potential (which is certainly present) of this technology, yet using it without any critical sense and, above all, without a supporting culture behind them. Indeed, over the years, not by chance, a scorched-earth policy has been carried out in schools, in school syllabuses and in textbooks, against the use of critical sense, above all through the more or less successful attempt to erase History and Philosophy.
This has meant that the youngest do not even have a “historical memory” of the past, which, therefore, can be rewritten at will. On the Web, besides intentional “disinformation”, tens of thousands of testimonies of the past put online years ago have disappeared. In addition to the systematic closure of social media channels considered “inconvenient”.
Also on the Web, there are already endless examples of reality manipulation: not only completely invented news stories (which are the order of the day, especially on the channels of “information professionals”), but even completely fake videos, with fake or real characters speaking and acting as one wants them to for the general public. Even for experts in the field, it is now almost impossible to state whether a video is “true” or “false”. By now, interest in what is produced by AI is an indispensable business. Suffice it to say that Alphabet, Google’s parent company, lost 70 billion in market capitalisation last February because of an “error”.
In practice, its Gemini AI image creation tool was producing historically and factually inaccurate images (like George Washington appearing a bit too “tanned”, or Nazis with skin of various colours). Basically, to chase the prevailing woke ideology, it had become more royalist than the king, to the point of ridicule.
The purpose of Artificial Intelligence: total control
But none of this is done secretly. The truth and the plans are told to our faces. And this has been the case for some time. The ultimate purpose of AI is control. Total control!
The good Yuval Noah Harari (whom I had already dealt with here) expressed himself on the matter thus: “The most effective tool used by a dictator in history is fear. You are Stalin and you want to keep people in line, what do you do? You terrify them. How do you terrify an artificial intelligence? What are you going to do? Send it to a gulag? Kill its family? I mean, what can you do to an AI that starts saying things or doing things that go against the party line or tries to take power away from you? Dictators face a very, very serious problem, in some ways even worse than that of democracies”.
But there are umpteen examples in this sense.
The development of this technology is continuous and exponential.
Sam Altman himself, founder of ChatGPT, stated during the Entrepreneurial Thought Leader (ETL) held at the prestigious Stanford University: “We can say right now with a high degree of scientific certainty that GPT-5 will be much smarter than GPT-4. GPT-6 will be much smarter than GPT-5 and we are not near the top of this curve…”.
Where is the boundary then? No end is in sight.
It is no coincidence that all the world’s most powerful companies have thrown themselves headlong into it, ignoring the dangers of Artificial Intelligence: from Apple to Microsoft, from Amazon to Google, not forgetting good old Elon Musk (or “moss”, as Greg rightly calls him) who some time ago, precisely to acclimatise the sheep that follow him, launched into a fake crusade against the potential danger of AI, only to be the first to use it in his companies, especially in Neuralink. It is a lucrative business and a race in which everyone wants to be the first to reach the finish line. And naturally, they advertise it to you in the most affable and fascinating way possible. They want to convince the sheep that AI is human like us, very human, so much so that they hire a lawyer to prove it.
The road to Hell: the replacement of the human being
But how will this control manifest itself?
Aside from the control of the more “fragile” minds, because they are less supported by critical sense and historical memory, as I was saying earlier, what I believe will happen soon, much sooner than people think, will be the replacement of “humans” by AI and by the robots guided by it.
In truth, it is already happening almost everywhere. To speak of a field like mine, journalism, prestigious publications such as the Washington Post have long been producing articles written by AI. Even television news broadcasts are produced using this technology.
A German friend of mine, who works as a book translator from Italian into German for prestigious Teutonic publishing houses, told me that she recently attended an industry seminar during which a group of translators, herself included, were presented with some translations. The group had to decide which of the proposed versions, based on an English text, they thought had been better translated into German. Well, the first choice fell on a text that later turned out to have actually been translated by a human, but the second one chosen had been translated by AI.
They are even trying to introduce this type of technology into the realm of private and sexual life.
Not only will the so-called “intellectual” professions sooner or later be replaceable, but also the “manual” ones, through robots. By now there are all kinds of them, in every field of what is currently human endeavour (from factory production to the healthcare sector, from services to skilled labour, etc.), produced by specialised companies in every corner of the Globe.
A robot potentially works 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, does not get sick, does not go on holiday and does not have children to look after. Obviously, I can already imagine the comment of the usual do-gooders who will say: “Ah, but they break down too”. Thanks a lot… But for one robot that needs repairs or replacing, there is an endless legion continuing to do their work tirelessly.
And so? What will become of humanity, or rather, what is left of it? Simple: those who remain, between one scamdemic and the next, will have to be given a sort of universal basic income, two kibbles to say it once again “à la Greg”, keeping everyone under the constant blackmail of having it taken away if they are not obedient. Obviously, it will be a digital currency, time-limited (it must be spent no later than a certain date, on pain of forfeiture), to be spent on buying mostly useless objects and junk food to eat. All strictly in “15-minute cities”. We will all be happy to own nothing, to refer to the slogan coined by the powers that be.
Conclusion: the choice to remain human and analogue
Technologies, or rather, what Umberto Galimberti (until he went senile with the scamdemic) called the age of Technique, are an extremely powerful tool, much more than we can commonly imagine. And precisely for this reason they must be placed under the scrutiny of a, so to speak, category of the Spirit, namely Morals. Not by chance is it one of the most important branches of human thought debated over the centuries by Philosophy. What is permissible and what is not? How far can one go in pursuing certain goals and what can be considered “acceptable” to achieve them? Who decides what exactly is “acceptable” and what is not? Can one trust “Science” in a field like this? The answer is obvious.
And so? Can one rebel against this apparently inevitable destiny of “assimilation”, to use an effective expression used by the Borg in the Star Trek series?
I should say not, but partly yes.
Personally, I have decided not to avail myself of such technology. So to speak, I have decided to remain “analogue” and not to use (at least consciously) this powerful tool for any operation I carry out and for any problem I must solve. This is for two main reasons: the first is that I want to use my reasoning and cultural abilities in general to “get by” in every circumstance of life. I am human, I have a brain with its virtues and flaws and, above all, I am not afraid of making mistakes.
I know perfectly well that it is easier to take a lift to go up to the top floor of a building, but I also know that physical exercise, however hard and tiring, will ultimately bring my human organism many more benefits than momentary inconveniences. The second reason is that I realise perfectly well that the “system”, which has already enslaved me willy-nilly for many, too many things in my daily life, will certainly notice in real time through an algorithm that I have used its cheap (in this case even free) technology, and will thus know instantly that my will, sooner or later, can be broken and I, implicitly, blackmailed. The system will know it has breached my brain and that there will be a crack to make me a “slave”, just as it did with the mobile phone.
No, it is not just a matter of accepting to use a machine, which can also have its useful aspects. It is about something deeper. It is about delegating to the “system” the human capacity to think and make decisions, right or wrong as they may be. Everyone is free to choose what to do in this regard. I, at least as long as I am permitted, prefer to live.
