“But please remember the law by which we live: we are not made to understand a lie…”
At the beginning of his novel Machines like metitle translated into Spanish by Machines like me and people like youThe famous British novelist Ian McEwan brings together this short text by Rudyard Kipling, taken from his story “The Secret of the Machines”.
The advice expressed in these words is very accurate in an age of so-called post-truth, where these types of emotional lies that feed people like us daily and seek to shape public opinion are accepted. A goal they usually achieve successfully, because lying usually doesn’t have bad consequences for the liar, and news like the $785.5 million payment Fox was forced to pay for its lies is rare, because rare. Dominion Voting Systems’ attorney, after the case closed, said, “The truth matters.” I wish I was right.
It is precisely the fact that so-called intelligent machines are incapable of understanding a lie that is the key to McEwan’s book, in which he masterfully shows how it is impossible to survive in our world without the ability to discern between the truth and deception, between truthful communication, which seeks understanding, as is typical of the word, both in private and public life, and the manipulation of language to obtain false advantages. And this is precisely what is happening to us at a time when the work of communicative reason is obscured and strategic reason comes to the fore, to the point of occupying all public space. We cannot say that this is good news for the strengthening of democracy, a task that is so urgent because it is in danger all over the world.
As if that were not enough, this happens when advances in AI permeate our existence and multiply at all levels the channels of what should be a communication called to solve the major problems of an already cosmopolitan universe. This is why it is urgent to analyze the texture of this new world and a good starting point can be the mention of McEwan’s book, which gives rise to endless reflections, both ethical and ontological, on the question of know whether so-called “intelligent systems”, So-called intelligent machines have intelligence like humans – or can have it – and they are or can become people, self-aware and autonomous beings, which must be protected by rights and at the same time demand responsibilities. The big question is whether these machines are instruments that humans can use to achieve various goals, or whether they will gradually replace humans, bringing an end to what has been called the “Anthropocene.” , Homo sapiens.
The novel has a narrator, who is one of “people like us”, capable of understanding a lie, that is to say, of understanding that the opposite of what we think can be said with the intention of deceiving. . The narrator and protagonist’s name is Charlie, and he tells the story of how, having inherited some money when his mother died, he decides to use it to buy one of the first truly viable manufactured humans, put into production. sale for 86,000 pounds. In a first batch, twenty-five individuals were made (that’s the most neutral thing we can say): thirteen Eves and twelve Adam. Charlie wanted an Eve, but the Eves ran out after a week and he had to settle for an Adam. Despite the disappointment, it consoled him somewhat to know that Alan Turing, the creator of the famous Turing machine and the Turing test, which allows you to discover the intelligence of a machine by checking whether its responses are indistinguishable from those from others, had also acquired one like that, a human being. As we know, during World War II, Turing found the keys to deciphering Nazi codes, including the Enigma machine. Turing’s intervention at the end of the novel with a long and moving speech is decisive.
The big question is whether these machines are instruments that humans can use to achieve various goals, or whether they will gradually replace humans, bringing an end to what has been called the “Anthropocene.” the era of “Homo sapiens”.
Obviously, unlike biological children, who are born with their individual characteristics (what John Rawls would call the “natural lottery” which falls to each person, but also the “social lottery”, because the fetus absorbs the lessons of its socio-cultural environment and its backgrounds are very different depending on the country and zip code), Adam’s personality must be programmed, and that is why he is sold to the manufactured human with a four hundred and seventy page instruction manual. To complete the programming task, it is inevitable to put it into operation – to bring it to life? – but at the same time it is somewhat frustrating, because, despite the initial programming, machine learning will configure his personality and condition his decisions throughout his existence. Without forgetting the emergence of generative AI, capable of producing original and unexpected content in all social activities.
These innovations seem to confirm the suggestion of some authors of educational machines in those moral values that we consider important, starting the educational process before their birth, inserting into the silicon “brain” certain values that they will already ruminate on. the beginning and that they will develop without having to wait for the long process of evolution. In my opinion, this is pure speculation at the moment and raises a number of problems, as we will see later.
Because from the beginning of McEwan’s work the big question arises: is it possible for the machine to have motivations, subjective feelings, self-awareness, including a capacity for disloyalty and betrayal? Throughout history, there is no trace of a disloyal or treacherous machine. According to the narrator, the new Adam seems to be made for good and truth, and yet, can we speak of an “inclination to good and truth” in beings who are not endowed with the characteristics that we have just described? evoke?
