La pelle. Che cosa significa pensare nell’epoca dell’intelligenza artificiale

“The skin, which gives this book its title, is not only the seat of sensitivity. It is also, as the living envelope of a willing organism, what we want to sell dearly, at the highest possible price, at every moment of our lives; what draws us to another living being for inscrutable reasons of skin; or what can make us friends for life; or even what we would like to do or do to ourselves. In other words, it is a mixture of blood, sweat and tears that no machine can or will ever be able to imitate. That said, I am putting my skin on hold and moving on to silicon”. What is missing for a puppet to become a child? What do we have that artificial intelligence does not? If we are to believe what we read, nothing: computers think, and better than us, so much so that they are taking our jobs. But if we think about it a little, there are differences. Computers do not live, they do not die, they are not afraid, they do not get bored, and above all, they do not want to. Impassive, they record our actions and passions, and they need our input just as a vampire needs blood. Once we know this, the fear disappears. The blood that feeds the web, artificial intelligence, the great archive of human life, is ours, and it must return to us. But this can never happen unless we understand that what we have thrown into the sky and transformed into an evil and threatening entity is us and only us, in our knowledge and our ignorance, in our hopes and our despair. Unfortunately. Or fortunately, if we are able to grow flowers from all that manure.