Does synthetic intelligence make us extra human? | Training | Economy | EUROtoday

It is behind the images you’re taking with the cell, of that credit score software that robotically denied you, of the movies you see in any service of streaming Or the information that you just seek the advice of the Internet, as a result of the connection of the human being with synthetic intelligence is already as ubiquitous as invisible. “In most cases we do not know that we are interacting with artificial intelligence algorithms, but it is they who predict time; They decide what updates we read from our friends; What movies do we see; What music we hear; What books we buy and even where we are going, because maps programs work with AI. If you mention it, most think of Chatgpt, but that is only the tip of the iceberg, ”explains Nuria Oliver, a physician for the MIT and scientific and co -founder director of Ellis Alicante, a analysis basis within the centered on humanity.

In the midst of the phenomenon that represents the event of synthetic intelligence techniques, there are quite a few voices that declare the significance of humanism, and essentially the most intrinsically human talents, when designing, utilizing and decoding all these new technological assets, in addition to The skill of this know-how to domesticate these abilities that make us extra human. But what are these traits? Would or not it’s appropriate to affirm that machines make us extra human?

“The arrival of the generative AI represents a revolutionary inflection point in our relationship with technology because, paradoxically, while automating tasks and increases efficiency, it requires us to be more human than ever, applying critical thinking and enhancing creativity, the ability to contextualize, empathy or apply an ethical judgment to the answer that the machine gives to what we ask, ”says Pedro Enriquez de Salamanca, Furby, Creative designer and researcher in Soulsht.

Artificial Intelligence and Progress

That causal relationship, nevertheless, doesn’t appear to be so clear, since nothing forces the person to use these human abilities when interacting with synthetic intelligence. As Oliver warns, “current systems of AI are not perfect; They have a series of limitations and, if we want to make responsible use of them, we effectively need to develop a series of skills such as critical thinking and sources verification, for example. But it’s not something that will happen [de por sí]since you can use any generative AI, believe everything you are telling you and act accordingly. ” A context through which, Enriquez displays, it’s mandatory faux information that outraged us or verify in our bias. ”

Oliver then wonders how many individuals actually train that essential strategy when interacting with AI: “Surely not many, because the great language models, the chatbots, They have such developed verbal capacity and the text they generate is so well articulated that most of us think that what they say is true. ” Another factor, he remembers, is that this technique of AI develops with that in thoughts: “In Ellis Alicante we have a specific project so that artificial intelligence fosters critical thinking, through a chatbot That does not respond to everything you wonder, but apply the Socratic Method so that you are you who finds the answers. ”

Therefore, with virtually all certainty, the hot button is in training, in order that society places all the things essential to recuperate these capabilities that appear to have been relegated. “Let the philosophy return to the institutes, that the debate is not a hobby but a usual reality, and that the ability to structure the thought differentiates you and allows you to exploit your creativity is a world where the immediacy and efficiency are always valued more ”, Says Enriquez.

The relationship with the generative AI, he provides, needs to be as pure as conversing, studying or considering. “Chatgpt, Dall-E, Co-cilot, Deepseek … they need us to tell them what we want. And in the need to know what to ask, the more knowledge we attach, the better questions we will ask ourselves and more critical we will be with the answers that we give us the machine. ”

In any case, “we must not confuse technological development with progress, understanding it as the improvement of the quality of life of all people,” says Oliver. “The question should be if the human being is able to develop an artificial intelligence that helps us develop our abilities and skills … because, if you think about it, today the situation is almost the opposite: a meme circulated a long time ago That said “what I want is for the AI ​​Planche, clean the house and go to the purchase, so that I can write or paint. But what is now is an intelligence that writes poems or creates images and we are to scrub the house and go to the market. ” Therefore, he explains, “it is not making us more humans, because for the tasks that we would like to delegate there is no technology with the necessary level of competition.”

Now, what can occur if synthetic intelligence doesn’t develop with that humanistic perspective? “The main risk is that the human being is displaced from the center of the” why “and” for whom. ” A more advanced technology but that leads us to create societies in which biases give rise to situations of injustice, or in which people’s privacy and freedom is not respected, ”says Catalina Tejero, dean of humanities In IE University. “It would lead us to return in lots of rights and ensures conquests that we already gave by cattle.”

Ethical challenges of artificial intelligence

If we talk about technological development and progress, we must also do it about the true meaning of innovation, experts point out. Thus, perhaps, it does not lie in technical perfection, but in the ability of the human being to direct and make sense of technology, Faced with the numerous ethical challenges that raise advances in artificial intelligence. Challenges among which Oliver stands out eight:

• The computational violation of the privacy of people, that is, to be able to infer very personal attributes (such as political or sexual orientation) from non -personal data (such as the pattern of “like” in a social network).
• Use without data permission containing personal information to train models of generative AI.
• Lack of transparency or opacity.
• Lack of veracity, since there is no guarantee of veracity in the content that is being generated.
• Lack of diversity, not only in terms of AI experts (of which only 12 % worldwide are women), but also in algorithms, which tend to be pigeonholed in certain patterns and stereotypes. A lack of diversity that, in part, may be contributing to the polarization of society, because they are created as parallel universes where there is no shared reality. Thus, the only thing each person sees are contained related to their ideology, which generates authentic bubbles in society.
• Discrimination. When we use AI algorithms to help us in decision -making, “many instances not solely are patterns of discrimination that exist in society are replicating, however they’ll even amplify or amplify them.”
• Another challenge and limitation is that of the carbon footprint, due to the immense energy consumption of artificial intelligence. “We know, on the one hand, that we need it to address climate change, because we need more precise climate models; But, on the other, the models of AI are of everything but neutral at the level of the carbon footprint, ”he admits.

Apart from those mentioned above, another significant challenge is that of subliminal manipulation of human behavior, “by that invisibility of artificial intelligence, which interacts with us as well as from the bottom, without us knowing it, in many cases it can be influencing or manipulating our behavior. ”

Oliver, in turn, stands out the fine line that separates the persuasion of manipulation, since “most of the digital world systems what they want in the end is to capture our attention. And for this they show us striking content that are able to catch it, which in a certain sense is a way of manipulating us. And if we click even better, because there is more likely to generate income. ”

Lack of independent research

In order to deal with some of those challenges, Oliver is striking about the lack of ethical and independent research in which he studies the negative impact of AI on society. A lack that is necessary to solve for an obvious reason, since most of the current research is carried out by the large technology companies of China and the US, motivated mainly by commercial interests.

“There are important questions about artificial intelligence that are probably not being studied, and this is because they are not interested in those who have developed that technology. For example: What is the impact on the mental health of the platforms or social networks full of artificial intelligence? Have you wondered how Facebook makes money? Well, through personalized advertising. And how do that income maximize? Maximizing the amount of time you spend on the platform. And that is achieved by publishing contents that are unlikely, bizarre and sensationalist things that often have a negative sieve. That is a human cognitive bias that the algorithms of AI take advantage of. ”

It is in this context that Oliver mentions one of the projects developed in Ellis Alicante, a worldwide pioneer work that studies the so -called “attractive bias”, according to which human beings perceive the most attractive people also as smarter as more intelligent , sociable, reliable and with less likely to be criminals; They are more likely to be promoted in their works and receive more favorable judicial sentences. The study, which was attended by 2,700 people, concluded that this bias acts opposed in men and women, for whom being beautiful and attractive led in many cases to the assumption that they have a low level of intelligence.

“It is crucial that professionals develop a essential thought that permits them to query and consider social, cultural and moral implications,” says Tejero. “In addition, it’s key to stimulate creativity and keep an open mentality able to establishing dialogues with different disciplines and worth techniques.”