In the AI Era, Are We in the Driver’s Seat?
Artificial Intelligence As Co-Pilot
The English elections were the first in which a candidate ran on a platform supported entirely by an intelligent digital system. The appearance of AI Steve, without much understanding why, prompted me to look up a Raymond Carver short story I read many years ago: Cathedral. Re-reading it in this context allowed me to dimension the challenge we are living as a species.
I perceive a central axis in the applications of new developments. I believe we are taking the first steps towards a society that relies on digital intelligence for decision-making. Decisions ranging from where to invest financial assets to which profile to have on a first date. AI Steve’s proposal is radical in this sense: he presented himself as the human support for an intelligent system.
Far from assigning a specific role to digital intelligence, this process places us humans in a different social position. We have always reflected on our lack of control over social issues, over the world in general. In my memory, this idea was materialized in a scene from the Cathedral story. Rereading it, I found it very productive for reflection.
In the scene, a blind man, considered by the protagonist as someone dependent, asks him to guide his hand around a cathedral drawing to understand the building’s silhouette. It all begins as a fully capable and arrogant man accommodating the requests of a “disabled” person, but it takes a dramatic turn. Propelling a collaborative experience, the blind man asks his guide to close his eyes and let go. The man cannot believe what he feels. He describes the sensation as “nothing else in my life up to now.” He is accessing a completely forbidden form of knowledge, far from the rational relationship between sight and shapes, much more tied to a collective emotional experience.
Control has been entirely surrendered. Carver’s protagonist no longer understands where he is. It is likely that the same is happening to us today. We are facing a liberation that, at the same time, feels like an abdication. A completely new place. As if we were reaching a new evolutionary stage. Are we the protagonist, or are we the blind man? Both.
I believe that both characters represent a part of our humanity. The blind man possesses knowledge that the protagonist’s arrogance does not allow him to see. He has never seen a cathedral with his eyes, but he knows that the path to experiencing it is collective and emotional. The protagonist claims to know all of life but only accepts what is presented to him, only occupies the place assigned to him. Rational, the protagonist today would be destined to be dominated by a system that does the same as him but better. However, by closing his eyes, he accesses another way of knowing, of feeling knowledge. That irreplaceable human element.
Perhaps it is up for debate who sits in the driver’s seat. Maybe it’s time to drive in another direction, with our eyes closed, with an inward, more human gaze.
