For Freud, with monotheism, the alphabet and the 10 commandments also comes the Super-ego, the component of the psyche that regulates behavior and presides over moral consciousness in Western civilization. In the Freudian view, it is man who creates God, as a projection of the superego. This is a form of alienation: man submits to God, who presides over the repressive structures of both society and the soul.
We do not enter here into the questions of God’s existence and atheism, but we do want to point out the parallels between the psychological and ethical effects produced three thousand years ago by the introduction of an extraordinary cognitive technique, the alphabet, and those produced instead today by the introduction of another technology, that of Artificial Intelligence.
In the form of Assistant and Copilot, AI is already posing as a structure external to humans, created by them, guiding them through an increasing range of complex activities, initially professional then increasingly deep and psychologically and morally relevant.
The human temptation to alienate others, gods and mortals alike, from one’s decisions and responsibilities is amply documented in history.
The German translation of the word “guide” is “Führer,” which conjures up ominous scenarios: what Freud says is the superego can take divine, but also human, forms when repressive structures are run by dictators.
At the present time, authoritarian regimes are already making use of Artificial Intelligence: the Chinese Communist Party, for example, uses it to control the population through the Social Credit system.
In the Western-capitalist sphere, by contrast, the development of AI already seems to be aimed at pure profit, even in the form of financial speculation: the idea of replacing all economically relevant human activities with AI is certainly attractive from a speculative point of view, but it can have a devastating social impact, especially on the many of the current forms of employment.
This is why world leaders have repeatedly met to manage the impending development, which threatens to create very deep social conflicts if not managed with balance.
Italiano