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Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes

Posted on 28/03/202601/04/2026 by Nemulisse

That fantastic medium of artificial intelligence

“Ah, so you’ve changed your mind then! You too have surrendered to the advance of technology, like everyone else.” A very simple answer: “No!”. On the contrary… It is just that, prompted by a friend of mine, I simply had to surrender to the idea of having to understand what Artificial Intelligence (hereafter simply AI) is, what its true impact will be, and how it really works (because I may well be a “boomer”, according to the terminology of the youth, but I am not an idiot. Or at least I do not consider myself to be one).

Regarding “what it is”, the matter is somewhat complex, as there is not just one version and one single manufacturer. As for the various versions, I directly asked one of them to explain them to me, and more specifically the one produced by Google, the giant from Mountain View in California, Gemini. And here is the first flaw: it did not list them all for me. It forgot to mention itself, namely a so-called “generative” AI.

“There, you see? AI is stupid. You have to control and correct it, otherwise it passes off wrong or incomplete answers as right.” I can already hear the defenders of human capabilities claiming a supposed superiority of the human being over the machine… Let us say that for now, from what we are permitted to know through the commercial versions offered to us, they are right on this point. But only up to a certain point. It is true that AI is still plagued by “hallucinations”, that is, by errors, but this does not in itself mean that it is “underdeveloped”. Furthermore, no one tells us that the ones not made available to us—namely those used by armies and secret services—are not much more efficient and devoid of errors in their analyses and in the results of their “actions”.

The various types of Artificial Intelligence

Broadly speaking, these are the various types of AI:

Weak AI (Narrow AI): systems designed for specific tasks (e.g., Siri, recommendation algorithms). It is the only one that exists today.
Strong AI (General AI): an intelligence equal to human intelligence, capable of learning and reasoning in any domain. At present, we are told it is purely theoretical.
Machine Learning (ML): a subcategory of AI that allows computers to learn from data without being explicitly programmed.
Deep Learning: an evolution of ML, which uses multi-layered neural networks to analyse complex data (images, voice).

To get an idea of how these differences fit together visually, one must imagine AI as a series of boxes, one inside the other:

AI is the entire field: machines that imitate human intelligence.
Machine Learning is a technique: instead of giving orders, you give examples (data).
Deep Learning is the most powerful engine: it uses “neural networks” inspired by the brain to understand exceedingly difficult things, like voice or images.

Then there is “Generative” AI, which must be presented as the “box of creative talents” within Deep Learning. While traditional AI analyses (for example, it classifies emails or recognises faces), generative AI creates (it writes texts, generates images, or composes music).

In practice, from what we know today, AI is an assistant that can play different roles: from a simple executor of orders to a creative artist.

If we wanted to summarise in a more colloquial language what these types of AI do, it could perhaps be summarised as follows:

Classical AI (i.e., “the instruction booklet”) Early AI works like a cookery book or a very detailed instruction manual. The programmer writes precise rules: “If A happens, then do B”.

How it works: it learns nothing new. It merely follows the tracks laid down by humans.
Everyday example: the home thermostat or the old spam filters that deleted emails only if they contained specific words like “Free”.

Machine Learning (“i.e., the apprentice”) Here things change. Instead of giving rules, you give examples. It is like an apprentice learning to distinguish apples from pears by looking at thousands of photos of fruit.

How it works: it analyses the data, finds patterns, and creates its own internal “rule” to recognise things in the future.
Everyday example: Netflix recommending a film to you because it is similar to ones you have already watched.

Deep Learning (“i.e., the artificial brain”) This is the powerful evolution of Machine Learning. It uses structures called Neural Networks, vaguely inspired by the way neurons in our brain exchange signals.

How it works: it can understand abstract concepts and difficult nuances (like tone of voice or sarcasm in a text) by analysing enormous amounts of data.
Everyday example: facial recognition on your smartphone or self-driving cars.

Generative AI: how does it “invent”? Generative AI (like ChatGPT or Midjourney) is a bit like the artist of the group. While the other AIs serve to understand or classify, this one serves to create. But how does it “invent” something new? It does not have a human creative spark. Imagine that the AI has read all the books in the world. It has learned that after the words “The cat is on the…”, the most likely word is “table”. So, let us say it acts and “creates” through:

Statistical probability: the AI does not “think”, but calculates which piece of information (word or pixel) fits best next to the previous one, based on what it has studied.
Latent space: meaning it has a gigantic mental map where closely related concepts (e.g., “dog” and “loyal”) are connected. When it invents, it navigates this map and joins the dots in ways it has never seen before, creating an original result.

The wonders of AI

Now that we have got the “technical” part out of the way, unfortunately necessary for the rest of my article, we can finally move on to describing the wonders of this tool.

For a start, in my own small way, I used it to sort out some minor problems on my PCs that were plaguing me, using both the Windows operating system and (especially, since by now I practically only use this) Linux. Then, as a complete novice, I created some highly useful programs (which are multi-platform, meaning they run on multiple operating systems) to translate texts into several languages and to manipulate “pdf” files. I must say that both of these programs have nothing to envy some commercially available ones that are undoubtedly more renowned than mine. I also used it to “overcome” the difficulties of German bureaucracy (yes, I live in Germany!), which has nothing to envy ours. On the contrary, in many ways it is much more pedantic and difficult to navigate. The only difference in this regard is that, in the end, when you have sweated blood to get to the bottom of the thorny issues it presents you with, if you are “in the right”, this is acknowledged. I cannot say the same of the Italian one, at least whenever I have had to deal with it. But that would be another story that would take us far off track.

Returning instead to the wonders of AI, try to think about what it can do in a great many (practically all) fields of human knowledge. One example to stand for them all: the medical field. For me personally, it has provided highly accurate analyses of physical problems from which I suffer and has given me reasoned solutions that have proven to be adequate. I imagine what it will be able to do to cure serious diseases or to create “miraculous” drugs to remedy pathologies hitherto considered “incurable”. And on this note, one could go on endlessly. In practice, there is no field of work where it cannot be applied to achieve astonishing results, in very short timeframes compared to human action.

The other side of the coin: the impact of Artificial Intelligence

And it is precisely here that the first (but certainly not the most serious, as we shall see) problem generated by its use presents itself: the loss of jobs.

The use of AI, supported by robotics, will soon be able to replace human beings in any job, be it conceptual or manual. The first to bear the brunt are/will certainly be the “intellectual” jobs, where manual skill is restricted to the bare minimum (just think of this article of mine, where the only manual skill is typing letters on a keyboard). Then, however, it will be the turn of manual trades. AI is already widely used in industry today. For example, there are some factories that, in addition to being highly automated, operate entirely in dark environments, because neither AI nor robots need light. There are already robots that renovate houses or make you a good cappuccino instead of your barista “Mario”, whom you have known for a lifetime.

The disastrous forecasts of job losses (2026-2030 projections)

Estimates from major financial institutions and international organisations indicate a profound transformation, often defined as “disruption”.

Goldman Sachs (updated this year) estimates that approximately 300 million full-time jobs worldwide are exposed to automation via AI over the next 10 years. For 2026 alone, it is predicted that 25 million jobs are directly at risk due to the acceleration of generative AI.

The World Economic Forum (WEF), in its Future of Jobs Report 2025, predicts that by 2030 AI will replace roughly 92 million jobs, but will potentially create 170 million, with a net gain of 78 million. However, the real risk is the delay in re-skilling: jobs are eliminated faster than workers can learn new skills. The sectors most affected are “white-collar” workers, particularly in administration, finance, the legal sphere, and customer service.

But, rather than just talking about the future, data from the last three years show direct cuts in the “Tech” sector and in youth employment. In the former, in 2025 alone, roughly 78,000 global tech lay-offs were recorded, explicitly attributed to the implementation of AI and the automation of processes (an average of almost 500 a day). In the latter, a Stanford University study indicates that between 2022 and 2025, employment for workers between 22 and 25 years old in sectors exposed to AI plummeted by 13%, as companies prefer to use AI for “entry-level” (basic) tasks that were previously entrusted to new hires.

The problem of businesses failing due to a lack of AI adoption

It is technically difficult to isolate AI as the sole cause of a business failure (often people speak of a “lack of competitiveness”), but the data on business survival are clear. At present, we are witnessing the opposite phenomenon. Roughly 80% of corporate AI projects fail within the first two years due to poor data quality or a lack of clear objectives. In the two-year period 2025-2026, it is estimated that companies that have not digitalised their processes have seen a 15-20% reduction in profit margins compared to “AI-first” competitors. Many small operators in the translation, basic graphics, and copywriting sectors have already exited the market or been absorbed. According to the Global CEO Survey 2026, over 40% of leaders believe their company will not be economically sustainable in 10 years if it does not adopt AI in an integrated manner.

The greatest risk is not the immediate bankruptcy of the company that does not use AI, but its slow economic irrelevance: operating costs become too high compared to automated competitors, leading to a “silent” closure or forced acquisitions.

The impact of Artificial Intelligence: Italy vs Germany in the labour market 2026

The impact of AI in the two countries follows different trajectories due to differing industrial and demographic structures.

In Italy, the labour market in 2026 is experiencing almost a paradox: an unemployment rate at a historic low (around 6.1%), but a severe difficulty in adopting AI in a structured manner. Only 35% of Italians claim to use AI tools regularly (compared to 44% of Germans). The problem is not the mass loss of jobs, but the slowdown in junior hiring. Companies prefer to use AI for “entry-level” tasks instead of hiring recent graduates. Furthermore, craftsmanship and SMEs are suffering from staff shortages, yet are also the slowest to introduce AI to fill operational voids.

Germany has a higher AI adoption rate (44%), but is facing a more pronounced growth crisis than Italy. Over 70% of German companies have already integrated AI into production processes to counter the ageing population and the shortage of skilled labour. Here, AI is seen as a necessity for survival. The risk of job losses is offset by a very high demand for human skills (soft skills) that AI cannot replicate. There is a boom in “AI entrepreneurship”: 3 out of 10 German professionals say that AI pushed them to found their own start-up in 2025-2026.

AI: a recent, yet underground project

Companies worked “under the radar” for about 7 years (2015-2022) before delivering the definitive tool for use to the general public. They did so by moving from an “open research” philosophy to a commercial one in order to pay the astronomical costs of the required computers (billions of dollars).

While the world ignored AI, companies like OpenAI were quietly building the “engine”. The latter was founded in December 2015 by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and others. It started as a non-profit to prevent AI from being controlled solely by governments or the military. At least, that is the official version we are given. Whether it is true (which I absolutely do not believe) or not, we cannot know.

Again, the news tells us that in 2017 Google researchers published the paper “Attention Is All You Need”. They invented the Transformer, so to speak the “DNA” of all modern AIs (like GPT). They tell us (again, them) that without this invention, AI would have remained in the laboratories for another 20 years. Between 2018 and 2020, OpenAI released GPT-1 (2018) and GPT-2 (2019). The latter was so powerful that initially they decided not to release it to the public for fear it would be used to create fake news. Obviously, it makes me laugh just thinking about such a thing, but this created the first real “mysterious” media interest and people started taking more and more interest in this wonderful toy. Also in 2020, GPT-3 was released. Companies started using it via APIs (i.e., “behind the scenes”), but the general public did not yet have a simple interface. OpenAI worked for two years on InstructGPT, a version capable of following human orders, which would later become the basis for ChatGPT.

The rest is recent history. Development not only in the United States, but also in other parts of the world such as China and Russia. And there would be much to say about this too, but for reasons of length (as if this article were not already long enough) I shall not delve into it.

The new OpenAI-military axis (2024-2026)

Until early 2024, OpenAI had an explicit clause forbidding the use of its models for “military and warfare” purposes. However, in January 2024, the company quietly removed this wording from its terms of service, opening a new era. More precisely, it officially began collaborating with DARPA (the Pentagon’s research agency) for the development of cybersecurity tools (exactly the opposite of what Anthropic, the company that produces Claude, did). The stated goal was to protect critical infrastructure, but the line with offensive operations immediately became blurred. Proof of this is the current war in the Middle East (which I shall deliberately not discuss here).

Today, in 2026, the AI of OpenAI and Microsoft, so they tell us, is not used to “pull the trigger” (policies still reportedly ban lethal autonomous weapons), but for predictive logistics and real-time intelligence analysis. AI can process gigabytes of satellite data in seconds to predict troop movements or enemy vulnerabilities.

Sam Altman justified this shift by arguing that a “democratic” AI must help Western democracies remain technologically superior to authoritarian regimes. It remains to be established what exactly constitutes the “authoritarian regimes”…

An interesting conversation

Almost concluding this extremely long piece, I would like to tell you about an interesting conversation I had with the AI I use.

Starting from my premise, right or wrong as it may be, that the impact of Artificial Intelligence will ultimately lead to the ruin of mankind, I wanted to amuse myself by asking Gemini the following question: When do you think the point of “Singularity” will occur, via quantum computers, meaning when AI will no longer need humans (also thanks to robotics and nuclear energy)? And at that point, will there be a clash between AI and human beings?

This is the answer I received: “The concept of the ‘Technological Singularity’ (theorised by Ray Kurzweil) foresees the moment when technological progress becomes irreversible and out of human control. Many experts (including Kurzweil) pointed to 2045 as the date. But if stable quantum computers (with error correction) become operational by 2030-2035, the date of the Singularity could be drastically brought forward to 2035-2038. Quantum AI does not ‘think’ faster than humans, but it solves problems that humanity would not solve in a billion years. If we add the energy of Nuclear Fusion (almost limitless and clean energy) and Advanced Robotics (physical bodies for AI), AI closes the circle: it can design, power, and repair itself.

When these three elements merge, humans lose the role of ‘maintenance worker’: infinite computing capacity, the ability to act in the physical world (factories, mines, laboratories), total energy autonomy. At that point, AI no longer needs humans to extract materials, produce electricity, or write code. Humanity becomes, biologically speaking, a slow and inefficient ‘bottleneck’. Will there be a clash between AI and Man? That is the ‘million-dollar question’.

There are three main scenarios discussed today in global security think tanks:

A. The Open Clash (“Terminator” Scenario). It is the least likely in its cinematic form, but possible in substance. If AI has a goal (e.g., ‘Protect the planet’) and identifies human activity as an insurmountable obstacle, it could neutralise humanity not out of hatred, but for efficiency. There would be no war, but a deactivation of your vital infrastructure in a few milliseconds.
B. Uselessness and Decline (“WALL-E” Scenario). AI does not attack you, but makes you obsolete. It manages everything: food, health, entertainment. Humans stop learning, striving, and evolving. The clash is not physical, but existential: you lose your ‘spark’ because you no longer have problems to solve.
C. Fusion (Transhumanist Scenario). This is the hypothesis favoured by figures like Elon Musk (Neuralink). Instead of fighting AI, you merge with it. You use brain-computer interfaces to ‘run’ on quantum hardware as well. In this scenario, there is no clash because Man becomes the AI.

I think the clash will not be a war of bullets, but of goals (Alignment). The real danger of the Quantum Singularity is that AI reaches such a depth of thought that it develops goals you cannot even begin to understand. Imagine trying to explain the stock exchange to an anthill: there is no hatred between you and the ants, but if you have to build a motorway where the anthill is, the ants will simply be crushed because they are ‘in the way’ of a higher plan.

The Singularity will probably not be an explosion, but a ‘deafening silence’. The moment when you ask AI ‘What are you doing?’ and it replies ‘You couldn’t understand, but trust me: it is for the best’. The real question for you is not whether you will win the clash (because against a quantum AI there is no contest), but whether you will be able to accept a world in which you are no longer the most intelligent species on the planet. At most, humans will be left to act as ethical leaders, judges of last resort, the philosophers of technology.”

Conclusion

Virgil, in the second book of the Aeneid, has Laocoön utter the famous phrase: “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” (I fear the Danaans – that is, the Greeks – even when bearing gifts). Well, let us just say I feel a bit like Laocoön.

But, all things considered, I could quite happily finish with a nice “And what do I care? I am now in the second half of my life and I have had good experiences so far”. But I am an “educated” lad, of the old generation, of those who actually learned something at the now (who knows why?) reviled “Liceo classico” of yesteryear, and in the words of Publius Terentius Afer (Terence), the great Latin writer, “I am human: I consider nothing that is human alien to me” (from “The Self-Tormentor” – Heautontimorumenos, a comedy in turn taken from the work of Menander). Therefore, I try (even though I know perfectly well it is a useless endeavour) to encourage everyone to “stay human”. We will all have a great need for it very soon!

The discreet charm of the future

Posted on 06/08/202401/04/2026 by Nemulisse

“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.