Artificial intelligence and natural stupidity

Capitalism in its terminal phase has unleashed an attack on the human dimension, having nullified the divine dimension: for the first time in History a civilization of machines is taking the place of that of human beings. After millennia of geographical discoveries, artistic masterpieces, political inventions, creations of the intellect as a reflection of the Spirit, the end of History seems to manifest itself in the reduction of intelligence to one of its products: the machine.

The plundering of natural resources, the savage exploitation of the environment are the poisoned fruit of the dominance of technology, which makes everything equal and uniform as it is functional to the system predatory capitalist system. Machine domination was born as the pursuit of ease, the rejection of sacrifice, well-being at all costs, comfort in place of physical and intellectual effort.

Machines by their very nature inert, without true intelligence, the eminent human and animal quality of living beings, first mechanical and now technological instruments, always the brainchild of the brilliant minds that dreamed and designed them. Servomechanisms of their creator, whose place or destiny they can never take or change, they do not rebel and alter the future as in science fiction books, but can become invasive mechanisms in the lives of humans by the latter's choice.

The System pushes toward man-machine hybridization, the last stage of human brutalization, of detachment from the divine by sinking into the telluric, into low materiality. But the responsibility lies solely with the herds who are seduced by the false promise of liberation from toil, emancipation from labor.

Marx argued that man is defined by his means of livelihood and labor is the instrument of emancipation, a perverse vision that denies the transcendent dimension. Labor is ennobled in the creative force, when it is transformed from labor, suffering into opus, the work produced by craft or art, a manifestation of the Spirit.

Today work, even computer work, the highest aspiration of many young people, is not burdensome but alienating, a sign of the spiritual regression of the age and cognitive decay attributable in good part to obsessive frequentation of machines.

In compulsive users of social networks, a bilge of the worst exhibitionist narcissism, the deficit of attention and memory is important. The more algorithms, the less intelligence and freedom. Inordinate use of the computer network leads to social isolation, alienation, the never-before known phenomenon of hikikomori, escape from relationship life, essential for mental balance, to take refuge in a confined space where the only contact is with a pc.

It is a symptom of deep fears, generalized anxiety disorder, unconfessed phobias, whereby the young people suffering from it withdraw from the actual reality, to hide in the virtual one, an oxymoron hiding psychic distress.

The town square where social solidarity was expressed, now replaced by “friendship” on Facebook, was the real stage for emotions and feelings, friendships were born, working relationships, new loves. Now isolation breeds only loneliness and despair, resulting in increased consumption of psychotropic drugs and drugs, a functional effect of the perverse aims of surveillance capitalism.

Controlling and manipulating lonely subjects deprived of affections is much easier and cheaper for Power than attacking healthy people embedded in a community, a natural form of aggregation and functional psychic defense.

No machine however sophisticated can ever replace the reassuring presence of a person, no social network will ever take the place of the tribe, with its values and mutual aid relationships.

No technological artifice evokes emotions and feelings, no computer program generates human relationships, work tools will never become affective substitutes. Technology is an ally of free men if it is used to help people, not replace them; the real danger of artificial intelligence is in its purpose, when that is determined by natural stupidity.

Orginal column by Roberto Giacomelli
Translation by Costantino Ceoldo