AI and the hijacking of the imagination

Whenever an invention capable of simplifying more or less costly tasks emerges, a significant portion of society's imaginative workforce is concentrated on developing this invention and finding a social place for it. In other words, many other issues are neglected in favor of focusing on the one that seems to promise the most dazzling future. There is, therefore, an expansion of imagination on the one hand, and considerable pressure on the other (some disciplines are filled with disciples; others are emptied). However, this shift in imaginative focus occurs amidst a kind of revolutionary explosion in which it becomes difficult to assess whether we will find "progress" in the direction indicated by the new invention.

When it became clear that the internal combustion engine was a tool that could add connectivity, convenience, and freedom to our lives, the machinery of social imagination provided everything necessary to transform the world into a place suitable for motor vehicles. Since the car was one of the elements that occupied the most space in our imagination during the last century, much of social organization revolved around it (the relevance of a tool like Google Maps demonstrates the magnitude of what was imagined and built from the idea of ​​the private motor vehicle). And if Elon Musk has dedicated so much energy to manufacturing electric vehicles, it is because the car still occupies a central place in our collective imagination.

However, for the last couple of years, the element that has expanded the most in the collective imagination of the Global North is AI: in addition to being the main object of investment and attention of capitalism, it appears in most conversations, occupies a lot of space in the media and in the content of networks and has become the tool that, day by day, more.

Chase Lochmiller, the head of the company overseeing the construction of OpenAI's massive data center (Stargate), believes the current moment is similar to the construction of the United States' massive interstate highway infrastructure. According to Lochmiller, if that highway infrastructure propelled the US economy, Stargate will play a similar role (despite the optimism, however, it seems that the project is struggling to materializeWith a discourse that blends marketing and technological faith, Lochmiller argues that this infrastructure, the largest humanity has ever built, will be like a vast network of virtual highways enabling the development of AI. For the first time in history, a technology is being designed that doesn't aim to automate human physical labor, but rather imaginative labor: we've put everything in the cloud, and now AI is the queen of the remix Insubstantial. Faith in progress, that creed that strengthened from the mid-19th century onward, pushes societies like ours to adopt a dynamic in which there is no room for pause or reflection. But lately we have seen that failing to examine the potential downsides of technological innovations is reckless. This is what Timothy Morton says in Dark Ecology On the myth of progress: "For every apparent forward turn of the drill bit, there is also a backward turn, a contrary asymmetrical movement."

AI is a tool that further facilitates what tech companies are after: that we spend more time using their services. The fact that society is increasingly addicted to digital stimuli and comfortsAnd, increasingly incapable of dealing with the inevitable frictions that arise in human relationships, this is causing AI to take on a monstrous form. Because it's not just that it leads to isolation and absorbs much of the imaginative workforce (in every possible sense), it's that it provokes a kind of imaginative kidnapping annihilatorThe other day I heard a man asking a shopkeeper if she knew how to make romesco sauce, as he already had the ñora peppers ready, and she replied, "Ask ChatGPT" (not "Wait, I'll ask that customer," not "Look in Mireia Carbó's book or Maria's"). Kitchen or to the program Kitchens"; ask a global chatbot how to make a typical local Catalan dish).

Although Chase Lochmiller uses the analogy of road infrastructure, the current type of investment and paradigm shift is more akin to the deployment of the American rail network. But, of course, the idea of ​​public transportation, of community-based ground transportation, ultimately failed in the United States. Private transportation, in fact, defeated trains and streetcars far too often and in far too many places around the world. However, we now see clearly that it would surely have been more beneficial to dedicate more imaginative labor, and more financial resources, to the idea of ​​efficient and sustainable public transportation. What would have happened if we had followed the—seemingly—less straightforward path?