The attribute of the pontiff, the heritage of the arrogant, the sign of the despot, infallibility has always been associated with absolute power, with complete dominance. In addition, he was the ballast of science and reason, the enemy of freedom and the secret of anti-culture. The mistake could not be the possibility of the gods or the fans. A mistake is the counterpart of the use of freedom.

“To err is human”, and to correct is wise. These were the rules when humility still reigned, and pride was a sign of folly, and sometimes stupidity of dogmatists. Culture is an approach to the truth, nothing more, an insinuation towards beauty and science, a universe of complements, and it is, by the way, a painstaking consolidation of truths, lies, successes and failures, which little by little create history. little.

I was alarmed when I heard that artificial intelligence (AI) is infallible, that algorithms do not make mistakes, that the source of wisdom has finally been found. My alarm grew because the titular pontiff of a brand new infallibility would be a machine, a telephone, a system whose abstraction hides secrets, authors, and tactics. And with which it is almost impossible to fight or disagree.

I was on guard because I believe that neither culture, nor science, nor knowledge can be the result of the approximation of a method that tries to replace the most human thing that man has: the ability to think, calculate, feel, set hypotheses, bet on risk, painstakingly build the truth. And be wrong.

Isn’t AI a completely new version of Leviathan, a definitive reinforcement of totalitarian theses…?

The matter is extremely important if we consider that these have always been the tasks of men; that from that journey emerges what has been consolidated after centuries as culture, worldview, science, values ​​and temporary truths. It is significant because the act of thinking has always been a way of testing the truth, but also of error, the tendency to argue, confirm, make mistakes and tirelessly return to the starting point. And submit to the consequences of mistakes. History is just that: hits, misses, corrections; it is experience that tells what to do and what not to do.

Getting to the absolute truth, to definitive information, to irrefutable theses, through a system of algorithms, would be the end of history understood as an essay, as an illusion of correctness and an effort to work for an idea and fight for it. . To arrive at absolute truths by means of a machine would be the beginning of endless boredom and, what is worse, the consolidation of the power of all absolutes: scientific, cultural and political.

Isn’t AI a completely new version of Leviathan, a definitive confirmation of theses about totalitarianism of the worst kind, about the monopoly of truth, about the anonymity of the power of knowledge?

If the AI ​​is wrong, as it clearly is, it would be confirmation that it is an interesting information factor. And not a source of absolute truth. (OR)