2023-12-23 03:30:00
Federico Pavlovsky*
In 1971 the writer, political scientist (and futurologist) Alvin Toffler in his text “The Shock of the Future” described that in relation An accelerated, non-linear change would occur to technology, at an incomprehensible speed and in a short time, which might not be fully explained with the conceptual references of the time, to such an extent “that it would be denied by cultured and refined people.”
At some moments in life, only exaggerations seem to be true, that moment where boundaries burst into pieces and a sudden forward momentum occurs.
Toffler pointed out at that time that the technological emergence would generate not a changed society, nor an expanded society, but rather it would generate a new society: a revolution that would destroy institutions and power relations.
We are going through a change that is not linear, but in leaps, turns and setbacks. A new scenario, particularly individual, with unknown circumstances, where technical and scientific problems begin to be left behind, to give rise to ethics and politics as keys to survival.
As an example, cars guided by artificial intelligence (AI) must make decisions in extreme situations: in the event of an imminent collision that might harm third parties, what decision should be made? Protect the life of the occupant at any cost, choose the scenario of least possible damage, which might involve the death of the occupant?
These decisions will not be spontaneous, but rather the implementation of programming made by humans, with preferences, biases and interests.
To understand how scientists and technology developers in particular think, let’s take as a paradigmatic example to physicist Robert Oppenheimer (creator of the atomic bomb), who following having worked frantically for years to create it, following witnessing the first experimental detonation of the bomb (July 1944), said something like. “We did?, We are sons of bitches!
In the following years Oppenheimer became an activist once morest the non-war use of atomic energy, to such a level that the FBI ended up investigating him and accusing him of being a communist (well portrayed in the film Oppenheimer, 2022).
The Oppenheimer example illustrates a current situation: developers (whether for fame, a sublimation impulse, money or the Nobel Prize) are not going to stop with respect to research, production of results and launch of new products. The maxim warns that, with greater technological development, products are more transitory.
We will instead see attempts at regulation (generally inevitably slow and deferred) and some warnings from the technology developers themselves with more or less concern (or guilt) regarding the scope of this social experiment.
The documentary “The dilemma of social networks” (2021) or the published letter from the main CEOs of technology companies requesting to delay the development of AI for six months (2022) are some examples. The rapid change is going to continue and they know it.
A type of human intelligence has no chance of competing with AI, that was announced since the late 60s, but we have the clearest memory from 1996, when the Deep Blue computer gave a good beating to the best chess player in the world. world (Garry Kasparov), marking an irreversible trend, which was later transferred to other strategy games such as GO.
A type of intelligence, because there are still things that machines do not know how to do, to the point that we continue to check the “I am not a robot” box. When we do a procedure, to confirm that we are not a bot, a step that machines do not yet understand, a fact that is known as the Turing test.
Algorithms have entered our lives, from movies to sexual encounters, from travel to scrolling preferences. In this new society of connection, immediacy and superstimuli that keep us trapped in the data cloud, possibilities and challenges emerge.
Feelings are mixed, on the one hand, AI advances in medicine in the fields of genetics, imaging medicine, oncology, drug manufacturing and cardiology seem nascent and at the same time fascinating. On another level, and as if it were a tribute to Freud himself in his text “The Malaise of Culture” (1929), we are consuming as a society like in no other time, filling ourselves with data, drugging ourselves with images, reels, likes, posts. and even spirals of virtual anger (leaving non-virtual wounds).
In addictions, the substances that most frequently trigger a request for help are alcohol (by far the first), cocaine and the increasingly powerful cannabis (from 2% THC to 20% in two decades).
As an unsurprising development, taking into account the context, We are seeing, for the first time, a stable growth in behavioral addictions: in particular online gambling (with a fierce campaign) and pornography consumption, in both cases with an average age of 15 to 20 years as peak prevalence.
It is possible that the map of addictions will be modified in the coming years, as well as the need for addiction treatments (already obsolete) to be redefined from scratch, which may not be bad news.
Until now, the “addict” was a self-destructive person who had to be corrected and in many cases isolated. What’s going on when the context (with us inside) has gone crazy, when the same tools that produce innovation and possibilities also make us sick, when adults are just as lost as our children (or more).
Alvin Toffler said it in the last century. There will be a shock and a moment of perplexity and confusion for many, of new sufferings, new questions and new solutions.
*Psychiatrist, legal practitioner, master’s degree in Psychopharmacology and master’s degree in Drug Addiction.
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