As we witness artificial intelligence (AI) technology become more intertwined with everyday life, so too Voices are growing denouncing that these advances can become a threat for our species.
However, before giving ourselves over to the despair of a dystopian future worthy of a Hollywood movie, it is worth looking back and remembering when The world was about to end 25 years ago…
Those who remember the turn of the century must not have forgotten Y2K, a supposed imminent technological apocalypse caused by a lack of foresight when writing software.
As many programs, at that time, had coded the dates using six digits, on the night of December 31, 1999, it would go to 010100, an indistinguishable combination of that of January 1, 1900.
According to what was reported in the media at the time, this error would be fatal since the machines, upon detecting the inconsistency of a delay in timethey would shut down as a preventative measure or, even worse, they would go crazy or even activate unpredictable processes on their own.
Possible consequences included planes stopping in mid-flight, atomic power plants releasing radiation and even microwaves attacking their owners.
In the diary Clarion From the last days of December 1999, for example, there were editorials and opinion columns with assessments about the 20th century along with news in which experts They suggested strategies to face eventualities when the clocks struck twelve, recommending stockpiling food or foreseeing a general electricity outage, collapse of telephone lines and even the closure of financial systems.
The fear of Y2K, which can be revisited in an excellent documentary that the HBO Max streaming platform has just released called Time Bomb, generated a kind of mass hysteria but also a profitable business. According to BBC estimates, more than $300 billion was spent globally on preventive measures at the time.
In Argentina, for example, the Secretary of the Public Service Claudia Bello spent two million convertible pesos on consulting on the subject in 1999. But she did so with discretion and under the modality of direct contracting, which earned him a complaint in the Anti-Corruption Office and a multi-year investigation that ended with his acquittal in 2011.
If it is possible to believe that history leaves us morals, Y2K can teach us that apocalyptic narratives They tend to be fueled by those same people who then benefit from our fear.
Elon Musk, for example, said that working with AI is like “conjure demons”something that was supported by Bill Gates, who added that he does not understand “why there are not more people concerned about this.”
However, both entrepreneurs are responsible for some of the companies that work the most and profit from this technology.
Therefore, before we despair thinking that the future recreated in to the saga Terminator It is real, we must think if our fear does not end up being functional to the same interests as always.
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