Opinion – Latinoamérica21: Capital mobilizes extremely artificial intelligence in its favor

What exactly does artificial intelligence mean?

Let’s start with the first term, “intelligence”. An individual, human or animal, is considered intelligent, first, when he demonstrates the ability to solve problems and overcome obstacles, in order to produce a result or reach a previously established goal, or the ability to get rid of unforeseen problems.

In both cases, it is an intelligence related to the so-called technical or instrumental rationality, belonging to the realm of means. There is, however, another intelligence, which is of the order of ends. This is of the ethical-political or teleological type, also concerned with the adequacy of means to ends, that is, it also has the instrumental element; however, just as or more important for this intelligence is the very validity of the ends. Do they deserve to be hit? Because? At what cost?

We will return to this point below. Let us now see what the second term of the expression “artificial intelligence” means.

Without much effort, when we think of the notion of artificial, its counterpoint immediately comes to mind: “natural”. Thus, artificial would be everything that is not natural. However, looking at the question more closely, a new problem arises: if natural is everything related to or derived from nature, is there something unnatural, something essentially artificial? If we extend the notion of nature to the universe itself, what could be unnatural, abstracted from metaphysics? Anything. Unless we think of the artificial as something not directly produced by nature, but whose production, whose existence was mediated by human action.

And, in fact, when you think about it, this is precisely the meaning of “artificial” in common sense, which expresses the tacit separation between humanity and nature, between the subject who thinks and the world in which he acts, the world object of the thought and action of the human being. subject, which includes other subjects converted into objects. This idea is so characteristic of modern culture that it really seems natural! But it is not common to all peoples and is not sustainable: there is, on the one hand, nature and the natural world and, on the other, the human and artificial world. It’s one world.

What exists is the human capacity, without transgressing natural laws, which is not possible outside the myth, to discover new combinations of natural substances and potencies and, with that, to produce things that were not given, transforming the world and itself. itself, for better or for worse.

Therefore, “artificial” is not opposed to “natural”, being only the natural mediated by human action. With this in mind, when can it be rigorously affirmed that this type of mediation is properly intelligent? In the technical or instrumental sense, the examples are innumerable. In the ethical-political or teleological, not so much.

One of the celebrities of so-called artificial intelligence is algorithms. Let us then think about the algorithmic mediation of digital platforms based on the previous arguments. Is there intelligence at work there?

Let’s go back to our definition of “intelligence”: at a first glance, intelligence is “the ability to solve problems and overcome obstacles, in order to produce a result or achieve a previously established goal, or the ability to get rid of unforeseen problems”.

Now, in this sense, algorithms certainly demonstrate remarkable intelligence. However, who created them? Who is actually the smart guy behind the algorithms? Your programmers? Certainly, because it is thanks to their own intelligence that they are produced. But we are still at the level of technical or instrumental intelligence, whether in the case of algorithms or the programmers themselves.

After all, if we think about the second level mentioned above of the notion of intelligence, which we call ethical-political or teleological, who is the subject of this intelligence, the subject who does not elaborate the means, but who establishes the goal of the action as legitimate and worthy of investment? ? This subject is moved by a purpose, by a desire, by an end. He has the power to put the means into action. Who is this guy? The owners of digital platforms and their shareholders. What is your purpose, your desire, your end? Get richer.

Now, from the point of view of these individuals, the mobilization of the artificial intelligence of programmers and algorithms, when efficient, is proof of their own intelligence. We say that programmers’ intelligence is also artificial, as is every conceivable intelligence, insofar as it is mediated by the entire history of material and cultural mediations that allowed their formation as programmers. They weren’t born that way.

On the other hand, is the expansion of the capital of the owners of the corporations that control the digital platforms and of their shareholders effectively intelligent from the point of view of humanity as a whole and of nature itself?

In the light of a set of alarming contemporary phenomena, the answer will hardly be positive, such as the environmental collapse and the return of hunger in Brazil, largely a result of the growth of digital disinformation on the network, laden with hate speech, irrationalism, misogyny, racism, homophobia, climate denialism, resurgence of anti-vaccine movements and, tying the knot, fascism.

It is not, therefore, a problem of a technical nature, but an ethical-political one, which cannot avoid updating the critique of capitalism. For the problem that once again unavoidably arises is the contradiction between the public interest, which obviously includes the preservation of nature, and corporate interests. Because capital, which is like the unconscious subject of the whole process, has a very artificial intelligence in the sense of mobilizing human and natural resources for its own growth, which is its only purpose.

At the same time, this has proved to be the height of stupidity, for the whole of humanity and nature, stupidity understood here in the combined sense of lack of intelligence and brutality.

This picture illustrates the dominant trends of our time. If we’re smart, we need to change course.