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So many voices and official studies are warning us that the ever-widening adoption of artificial intelligence is increasing and will continue to increase unemployment, misery and social exclusion. Artificial intelligence is accentuating the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few companies and individuals. Let us look around, for everywhere we can see misery and degradation, material and moral, provided we have eyes to see, a mind to understand and a heart to feel.
We have known since the last century that sooner or later artificial intelligence would replace us in many jobs, creating a cascade of problems. This awareness has been heightened in recent years, even before the advent of ChatGPT. Then, when ChatGPT was made known to the whole world, the great enthusiasm made us forget the slavery of human beings to their technological artifacts. It has been like this for millennia, forever. Every new technology creates enthusiasm, addiction, blind adherence, seduction, but very few critical voices are heard.
Even now many jobs are being wiped out by artificial intelligence. But in the end the real problem is not the machines, but the trust we place in them. The more we trust technology, the less we trust ourselves and other people. Technology will never be able to give us what we need, which is affection and love, or explain or solve the mysteries of birth and death. No artificial intelligence will be able to tell us why we exist or what we came to this world to do. The answers to these questions are not computational objects of algorithms, not computable by artificial neurons, nor graspable with our ordinary cognitive tools. We can approach them only with a faith capable of penetrating the ineffable.
All this is happening while the world is engaged in great wars, great horrors that continue the tragedies and logics of the last century, with the externally induced desire to take sides. But those who fail to have compassion for all, victims and perpetrators, suffer from the learned inability to love, that same inability that divides the world into good and bad. In this scenario, so many people are waiting for the Apocalypse as a deliverance from misery and relentless suffering, and they are not ashamed to say so, wishing for a real nuclear conflict as soon as possible. But even if the worst of cataclysms happened, would we be better off afterwards?
In this valley of tears and darkness, there is hope, however. In the end, perhaps those who have a true passion for life, those who seldom give too much ground to fear and though never to being blackmailed, will be able to survive with dignity. When the time comes, these will be the ones best suited to go fearlessly to the weighing of the heart in the court of Anubis. Indeed, those who are creative, passionate and courageous, those who are not easily treated as puppets maneuvered by the psychopathies and perversions of others, will know how to find their way. The faith and courage that emerge from a clean and light heart enable us to face adversity, including misery, unemployment and illness.
Everything is temporary, everything is impermanent. Many jobs are in crisis, but no crisis is forever; everything transforms.
Suspended above the palace of the god Indra, a symbol of the natural forces that nurture and protect life, is a vast web. To each of its nodes is tied a jewel. Each jewel reflects in itself the image of all the others, making the net wonderfully luminous. Each of us is one of these jewels.
With wishes for faith and courage,
October 25, 2024