We know that today there are artificial intelligence devices which, programmed according to a specific location on earth, can, just like flowers, turn in the right direction to capture the sun’s rays throughout of the year. However, the plant world is intrinsically dependent on its organism and has very little self-awareness.
Also, in a school of sardines, for example, each sardine has very little autonomy in relation to the group. On the other hand, there exists in certain more evolved animal species a degree of autonomy which comes from self-awareness. This is also why primitive peoples granted them the presence of a “soul”.
Note, however, that, contrary to what many people think, this self-awareness is nothing other than a survival mechanism! Humans may inflate their heads about themselves and associate them, as among the ancients, with the world of the divine, but this self-consciousness, or “soul”, remains essentially, just as for animals, a state which only aims to ensure survival in the most efficient way possible. Because humans are none other than one more participant in the order coveted by all living things. He is only part of this whole which totally surpasses him in its power to reproduce itself ceaselessly and always.
However, it seems that in these threatening times, humans prefer to forget this fragility by giving themselves over to… artificial intelligence. Rather than radically putting an end to the pollution of the planet, a sacrifice which seems too difficult economically speaking, he prefers to run away and resolve to what is, it seems to me, self-forgetfulness!
This is because we have difficulty adapting to the many new situations that present themselves to us today. While originally, humans had proudly made their access to knowledge a primordial element and planned their future there, this same knowledge today seems to bother them in its multiple contradictions.
It must be said that for quite some time now, many have been acting without “soul”, that is to say, preferring to withdraw from themselves and let themselves go with the flow of trends and fashions without questioning themselves too much. Our reliance on social media and press concentration and our indifference to poverty are good examples.
This is why many believe that in the current socio-political mess, artificial intelligence, loaded with our knowledge, would be the best tool to untangle our multiple problems. Is this not, in fact, a practical and objective intelligence, devoid of any feeling of fear or anxiety as well as any bias?
The question therefore arises: given our current inability to navigate, should we rely on this cold robotization of knowledge? Because, let’s say it all the same, no matter how much we program artificial intelligence in this or that way, it will never have a properly human character. Because our knowledge has been built over the centuries in a precarious situation. It therefore carries with it the scars of a constantly renewed struggle for our survival on earth. And that’s what makes it so rich…
We find the same spirit in the production of works of art. Through them, the artist, through his particular sensitivity, will fix his vision of reality in time. Having become immortal, his works will then be so many lifelines to which the public will be able to cling afterwards.
Just as with the work of the artist, our knowledge is developed from our difficulty of being and the clash of ideas. And although we say it is objective or scientific, it nevertheless remains always exposed to recasting and questioning. He is alive !
On the other hand, artificial intelligence, the fruit of an amalgam of millions of data and devoid of everything that makes humanity in the making, that is to say deprived of any existential essence, will never be anything other than the result narrow algorithms. Is this what we prefer to depend on today?