When I went to school, X was the unknown to isolate. Back then we called it “despejar”, because what was a real school unknown was Catalan! The X of today is no longer that unknown that had to be found in the algebra equation. We are getting to know it quite well. Perhaps not everything about it is known, because the algorithms that guide it are complex and not easy to unravel. Just as the human soul is not! But we do know what they intend: that we get hooked on it, that we depend on it, that it irritates us and that we react to it. And to achieve all this, they make X trained to agree with us or to provoke a response if we dispute it. X's algorithms seem to set the polarized morality of our time.

That we are starting with artificial intelligence using biased algorithms is no secret. The dangers of using AI without regulation have been demonstrated and emphasized, whether for personal purposes, in a company or institution, or, even more alarmingly, for disseminating content on social media. Achieving ethical algorithms, aligned with democratic values ​​and incorporating a gender perspective, is an objective that is being pursued, especially in Europe. Women experts in this field are shedding light on a rapidly advancing technology that seems difficult to control and in which, as in the world of... big tech, There's a lack of women.

"The voice of democracy will not be silenced by the techno-oligarchs "of the algorithm," says Pedro Sánchez in a new and defiant display. Two weeks ago, it was immigration, the far right's preferred bogeyman for mobilizing the public. The president announced the regularization of all those who have been here for at least five months. Recognition of the rights and dignity of Abascal and Vox, and the indignation of the PP, with their usual pathetic argument: they come to take jobs from citizens and dilute the essential values ​​of the nation. Steps in the challenge. By announcing the removal of minors under 16 from social media, he has provoked a furious reaction from Elon Musk and company, canonical representatives of the contempt for the population by those who consider them fodder for exploitation. It seems evident that the unrestrained use and exploitation of the digital space that certain companies intend to control, from the logic of a society where anything goes as long as it benefits them, given the scale it is acquiring, could become a real threat to the dignity of the human condition. People, the nihilistic principle of Everything is permitted. that prevails in the digital world exposes those who react with indignation against the president's announcement. They are the promoters and beneficiaries of networks where insolence reigns; where the notion of limits is conspicuously absent and places young people in a state of development within a delusional framework; where the idea of ​​values ​​and responsibility plummets; where the communication space is left in the hands of the so-called technocastewhere ignorance, impunity, and reactionary radicalization are fostered. And any warning about this reality seems worth heeding. It's not just Sánchez: the governments of France and Germany have also raised the need to stop the waste from the technocasteHowever daring it may seem to challenge the immeasurable power of social media promoters and everything that accompanies them.

Technological advances in the field of surveillance of people, and the lack of control with which they are implemented, have long been of concern to experts. But it has been in the wake of the pandemic that an increase in the use of these technologies has been detected, both by states and private actors. This is the conclusion of a report published by the Observatory of Human Rights and Business in the Mediterranean, the European Network of Corporate Observatories, the Multinationals Observatory and the Shoal cooperative, which is part of a series of studies that analyse the situation in other countries, such as France and Great Britain.

The term algorithm is used much more now than when the 9th century Persian mathematician from whom it derives, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, devised methods for solving first and second degree equations. The reasons are clear: now there is more data and more computing power. But there have always been algorithms, which are nothing more than a set of instructions aimed at executing a task. The recipe for a chocolate cake or a Valencian paella are algorithms. The way to light a fire with two sticks is an algorithm. The hunting technique used by some groups of killer whales, when they expel air while spinning under their prey to catch them in a cylinder of bubbles, is an algorithm, in this case generated and transmitted in a pre-linguistic way. So are the nuptial dances of the bird of paradise or lullabies.

Machines, although it may be hard to believe, are subject to moral and ethical principles. And the more sophisticated they are, which implies more degrees of freedom and more autonomy, the higher the ethical component. This is the case of robots and artificial intelligence. To a large extent, whether these principles are respected depends on their programming, that is, on the algorithms that are created so that the machines perform the function for which they are designed. In other words, human intervention in their conception. The study of these ethical rules and principles, which goes far beyond what Isaac Asimov defined in 1950 as the fact that in no way could a robot harm a human, is called roboethics. A discipline that is growing with each passing day and that has algorithm programming at its core.