On the Concern over Artificial Intelligence

1 With artificial intelligence, a new «preoccupation» has arrived, grounded in a contradiction: we’re worried about running out of problems to solve. Jeff Bezos, during an interview, laid that contradiction bare with this question: are problems really going to run out? Even if we were lucky enough for that to happen, there would be no reason left to worry.

2 What is really happening is something that rhymes with what has already happened so many times throughout history: concern is deepening and, at the same time, the sphere of human understanding is growing. This is how slavery was transformed into labor; this is how a new humanism blossomed again in the Enlightenment.

That is what is really happening now, and we should not turn this into recriminations, since there is no sense in blaming one another for what is happening to all of us, and even less in blaming others for what one is causing oneself, as we have seen in bloodshed such as, for example, the French Revolution.

3 We have to remember that pre-occupation is not limited to the negative interpretation we can give it: it is, to an even greater extent, being occupied with prior things. The prior, that «this side» bordering on the present in which we find ourselves, is the region of art, and the «beyond» is what we approach with art.

4 In this way, the range through which we take part in the full spectrum of reality is enlarged, because when we take a step like the one we are taking, it is not only a step back: at the same time we aim the arrow of our expectations and hopes beyond, as if we were drawing back to make a leap. And isn’t this what life does, and what it does best?

5 In the fruit, whether plant or animal, there is not only the will to survive; by carrying life on through seeds, the possibility of surpassing oneself is also preserved. That is, not only surviving, but understanding more and improving our perspective on reality, becoming more understanding.

And so we go on freeing ourselves humanly, as we can in no other way, by mastering things with which nature once tyrannized us.

6 To close this slapdash reflection, I would like to say the following: it is true that the lofty moments that lead us to this contemplation are then followed by the concerns that everyday life brings with it.

But for this very reason it is important for all of us not only to remember, but also to think and reflect on something Elon Musk likes to repeat, and that he says first to himself: «There can’t be only problems; there have to be things worth living for.»

7 These things are the pre-occupations, which come from this side of our present situation and go beyond it. In the seeds we are planting today —for example, through artificial intelligence or with new developments and possibilities in space travel— our capacity to survive is not only shaped and increased.

Here, through this, something far more valuable is also figured and configured: the possibility, by means of these tools we are building, of going in the future —both we and our children— still further beyond.