It is very rare to hear a politician speak with confidence about new technologies. This is not the case of Jose Maria Aznarthat in the conversation he had with Edward Inda During the celebration this Thursday of the third anniversary of OKBALEARES in Palma de Mallorca, he spoke freely about Artificial Intelligence and drew attention to the fact that “never in history has the human being invented machines capable of replacing them.
“We had invented bombs to destroy the world, but not systems capable of taking over from us. Generative artificial intelligence results in the autonomous ability of machines to think for themselves and make decisions for themselves,” Aznar explained.
“We see it every day. The average American checks their cell phone an average of 141 times per day. The degree of dependence is such that we cannot understand the consequences. We let robots organize our lives. In the coming years, what will happen is that we will have to decide how to resolve relationships with machines. This is a dimension we have never seen before. Can this make humanity extinct? Of course it’s possible,” he predicted.
“This produces a concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. Big tech companies have more and more power because it is very difficult to develop artificial intelligence if you start from scratch. It takes a lot of money and not everyone has it. The problem is which of these big companies has the most data. It is said that in 10 years, 90% of Internet traffic will be created by artificial intelligence. If all this combines with the systems of destruction that exist, we find ourselves facing a complicated scenario,” he continued.
“I spend many hours studying this because it worries me a lot. We must demand that tech companies be transparent. You need to know what data they are capturing because they can be full of all-time biases. There are algorithms created expressly to encourage polarization. We can’t look away. We can’t talk about it in Spain either, and we might wonder why part of European funds have not been used to understand what is happening. What ethical principles will we defend? Artificial intelligence carries risks that can only be controlled by societies that reinforce their humanistic values that strengthen the ethical and moral meaning of life. We must instill our values in machines, but we must be much more demanding of them than of ourselves,” he concluded.
