First at What?

I’d like to start by saying that if I were the Minister of Education of any country in the world, Byung-Chul Han’s Vita Contemplativa would be exactly the kind of literature I would most strongly encourage society to read.

The book is far too short for the amount it has to teach. Since I got on the plane, I’ve already read it twice, and I think I spotted several elephants I somehow missed the first time around.

The clarity with which it exposes the roots of our problems hits you hard.

No one listens. We are all busy producing ourselves. Whenever something pauses, we turn up the volume so we don’t have to hear what we don’t want to hear. Technology is the perfect tool for reinforcing the habit of immediacy. We want sourdough bread, but we don’t want to wait for it to rise. We go to a Michelin-starred restaurant and fill up on the bread basket.

Politics and capitalism managed to reduce the meaning of the word “development” to the material. Turning human beings into matter became the goal, and technology became its greatest ally. We lost the telescope. All that remains is the microscope: now, immediately, fast and anxious — show me the opportunity. The future? That’s somebody else’s problem.

And then yesterday, this arrives: Trump announces the “Superintelligence Task Force”. What until now had been called AI is rebranded as Superintelligence. Clayton, the person responsible for producing a report on the technology’s risks and opportunities over the next 120 days, amplifies his main concern in the media: “The risk of not being first is high,” he says, referring to competition with rival powers. “Not being first increases both identified and unidentified risks, particularly those coming from our adversaries.”

It makes me want to cry. What matters is being first. First at what? It doesn’t matter. Neither do the consequences.

Six spoiled kids with infinite money developed a technology they couldn’t control. Some of their best collaborators walked away because they could no longer sleep at night. That forced them to say the truth out loud. The world has no choice but to listen to what it doesn’t want to hear. 

So they pick up the phone and call the boss of the most spoiled of them all, the one with infinite money and infinite power: “Hey, we need you to put your foot down because we’re about to lose a serious amount of money.” The boss calls a meeting. “Guys, listen. This sudden attack of conscience is all well and good, but we need to keep moving. Are you with me?” Then he makes them an offer, in the finest Godfather tradition. The kids sign. And forward we go.

Han quotes Zhuangzi: “If a tree is planted carefully and allowed to follow its natural form from the beginning, there is no need for pruning or treatment of any kind.” The ethics of inactivity means making use of what is possible instead of imposing what is impossible. Since these people missed that class because they were busy playing ball on the beaches of SoCal, they decided the world would go another way. Et voilà.

That arbitrary decision, so characteristic of the power fever of a very small group of people, is forcing companies to lay people off in pursuit of efficiencies that are not necessary, but are being imposed anyway. Fine. You don’t like absolutes, so I’ll give you that: NOT everyone. But most of us used to be much happier.

Pass the sauce.

Juanca Santiago

#KillThisAI