What is artificial intelligence? To what extent can it catch up with, surpass or replace human intelligence and in what forms? To find answers to these questions, we need to focus on what we mean by intelligence: is it only knowledge (knowing what), or is it also wisdom (knowing for what)? According to Aristotle, wisdom…
Angels and demons of AI
We have long become accustomed to relying on GPS navigation to assist us in driving, and gradually others have been added to this system; so today, as we drive, we converse with different forms of voice assistants, to have them read us messages, activate functions, or call someone. After Siri and Alexa, we should therefore…
Is Artificial Intelligence morally neutral? Absolutely not. We are in fact exposed to a powerful ethical-political filter even in the use of generative AI, which is now within everyone’s reach. Try questioning ChatPGT on morally relevant issues, such as gender equality or racism. The answers will be strongly marked by politically correct filters. We are…
In our now secularized Western society, we still have several spiritual and ethical assistants shared by different social groups. In the past, the need for a confidential interlocutor to whom one could confide one’s doubts and problems was satisfied, for example for Catholics, by the existence of a confessor. The role of priests and saints…
In the cultural tradition of various civilizations, humans have also in the past imagined higher forms of intelligence, both positive and negative. In particular, we recall guardian angels and tempting demons, ethical metaphors of great influence, for example, in the Jewish and Christian traditions, but not only. Great authors such as Dante in the Divine…
Umberto Eco called the encyclopedia “the shared knowledge” of a cultural community. After the multimedia encyclopedias of the 1990s, came the era of the search engine, and ultimately the World Wide Web itself, which can also be called “shared knowledge.” After 20 years in which Google searches gave access to knowledge, it is now generative…
This is not the first time in history that a technology has revolutionized humanity’s cognitive, religious and ethical ecosystem. An extraordinary precedent, influencing humanity for 3,000 years, is the introduction of the alphabetic writing technique. The advent of Artificial Intelligence has all the characteristics of a profound revolution, destined to affect not only the economy,…
In his last book, “Moses Man and Monotheistic Religion,” Freud argues that the advent of the alphabet marks the transition from prehistory to history, from the primitive unconscious to the consciousness of historical civilization. For the first time, a human group, the Israelites on Sinai, has technology that enables the entire community (not just a…
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…
The enhancement of human faculties through the contribution of Artificial Intelligence can also lead to the strengthening of the negative characteristics of those faculties. Many criminals are already adopting AI technologies to carry out their plans, whether in the real or cyber world. The race to accumulate wealth and financial speculation features Big Tech, leaders…
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