The paths of war, artificial intelligence (AI) and capital are intertwined. Large Western financial and energy corporations announce record profits achieved with AI in the context of the invasion of Ukraine.
It is hard to ignore, for example, that last Thursday the Anglo-Dutch company Shell published the unprecedented profit of 9,600 million dollars in the first quarter of this year coinciding with the visit of Volodímir Zelenski to The Hague, where he requested a court international court to judge the crimes of his rival Vladimir Putin. A coincidence, without a doubt, but very illustrative of the forces that shape the present.
That money rules over all things is a truism that we tend to forget when we ask ourselves about the great challenges of humanity. Look, for example, at the apocalypse that is announced with AI, a technology capable, some say, of replacing man.
It seems, however, that thinking machines can only calculate and accumulate data. This is the most primitive form of knowing. They serve to reduce production costs, but not to advance knowledge. His mechanical thought learns from the past, from the collected data, but it is incapable of generating a new world, of thinking about what does not exist. That is why there are philosophers, like Byung-Chul Han, who are very calm. They say that human thought goes far beyond calculation and problem solving. Through passion and doubt, man illuminates what is not seen, what is beyond the horizon.
AI, so cold and shallow, cannot make peace in Ukraine, but it can cut production costs, increase profit on capital, and accelerate inequality to the detriment of middle class people. If these people live in the eurozone, their purchasing power, which has already fallen by 6.5% in the last two years, will not recover. At the end of 2024 it will still be 6% below the level it was in 2020.
With less purchasing power, these citizens will need more social assistance. How will they be paid for, especially now that European governments have skyrocketed military spending? With more taxes and more debt or with a renewed austerity? The AI still doesn't know how to solve the old butter-and-cannons equation now that security has become a priority. EU countries consider it more urgent than education, health and housing. They believe that Russia will remain a threat even if it loses in Ukraine.
The AI also does not clarify how the ecological transition will be paid for. To achieve neutrality in CO2 emissions, around 200,000 million euros per year are needed until 2050. The peace dividend had to cover this expense. With no identifiable life threat, European states bought butter. Now, however, as Kristalina Georgieva, manager of the IMF, has acknowledged, "the peace dividend has disappeared." Macron estimates that France will have a "war economy" for many years. The welfare state will suffer. Public officials from half of Europe, teachers, lawyers and health workers are already planning strikes and mobilizations. They feel underpaid, even if the AI says otherwise.
European governments will have to make budgetary decisions that will affect the daily life of citizens and the most radical politicians will take advantage of this to pour out their populist rhetoric on the wounded body of the middle class.
The situation is also difficult in many low-income countries. The debt drowns them. Inflation in the US affects them fully. When the Federal Reserve makes money more expensive to stop price rises, the interest on its dollar debt also increases. AI can help them recalculate how much they owe, but only Joe Biden and Xi Jinping can ease their debt burden.
Another example that AI does not understand the connection between two human activities as basic as war and work is Brazil. Its neutrality in the Ukraine conflict is explained by the fact that China is the main client of its minerals and agricultural products. China buys 30% of Brazilian exports, more than any other country. China is also Brazil's main supplier. This commercial relationship intensifies year after year. That is why Lula, without the help of AI, declares himself neutral and applauds Xi's diplomatic mediation. He is the smartest thing he can do to preserve employment in Brazil.
Wars are usually for the appropriation of other people's means of production. Also that of Ukraine, where Russia covets its industrial and natural wealth. The AI knows it. He also knows that the invaders design military strategies and recruit their armies on greed and cynicism, with epics and hollow values, but these are characteristics so human and flawed that the machines may never embrace them.
The machines can work as generals and businessmen, they can accumulate deaths and wealth for their owners, but they do not have the passion of the suicide nor the ingenuity of the explorer. It is a consolation that it cannot be Putin or Einstein.
AI doesn't save us from the horror of Ukraine or pay our bills, and this is a limitation we should keep. It confirms that the future, even if it is complicated, is still in our hands.
