The progressive cynicism with which artificial intelligence will be abused will test our ability to distinguish between truth and lies. So that you are preparing, I propose here, dear readers, a small mental exercise.
Let's see if you know which of the following three sentences is fake and which is real.
Former Spanish Prime Ministers Mariano Rajoy, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and José María Aznar appeared on stage this week to proclaim their joint repudiation of insults, lies and defamation in politics.
Former US presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush have this week proclaimed their joint repudiation of insults, lies and defamation in politics.
The former presidents of Uruguay Pepe Mujica, Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera and Julio María Sanguinetti have proclaimed this week their joint repudiation of insults, lies and defamation in politics.
I trust that most of you got it right: the first two are false; the third is the good one.
It's just that I've just traveled to Uruguay, a thirteen-hour journey to a better world, a country defined by the UN and others as the second in democracy, transparency and security in the American continent, after Canada. The week I spent in Montevideo offered me a vision of democratic civilization deliciously alien to the barbarism that consumes political discourse in Spain, where I live, and the United States, whose Trumpist dementia hypnotizes me.
The sweaty word polarization falls short to describe what is happening in the United States and Spain, not to mention the rest of Latin America, particularly Argentina, where politicians have been using anger as a means for some time preferred expression. In Uruguay, polarization would be an unknown phenomenon if it weren't for the fact that some read the international sections of the newspapers. What defines them there is consensus, a virtue of which they never stop bragging.
I offer you as an example the taxi driver who picked me up at the airport. It's a cliché about the taxi driver explaining his country to a foreign journalist, but the most curious thing here was that my driver's attitude was very different from that of the thousands I've talked to around the world over the years. The most common are the complaints, almost always from the pure capitalism exemplified by the lonely profession of taxi driver. What touched me in Uruguay was, on top of that, an ex-soldier.
The furthest thing imaginable from a Vox voter, or a Trump voter, Claudio told me that he was very much in favor of the recent arrival in his country of Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants (“they work hard and contribute a lot”) and he proudly spoke about how fraternal the relations between opposition politicians are and how honest the Uruguayan system is. While I was talking and talking, a phrase that I heard once came to mind and I thought: Uruguay must be a country of moderate fanatics.
The meeting this week that brought together ex-presidents Mujica, Lacalle and Sanguinetti confirmed my impression. It wasn't the first that the three celebrated in public, nor will it be the last. With a general election in sight, which will be held in October this year, they have embarked on a kind of roadshow around the country. Although they differ in the recipes they propose for general well-being, the trio's message is always the same. Mujica is from the left, Lacalle is from the center-right and Sanguinetti is in the middle, but what they all have in common is the deep conviction that Uruguayan democracy needs to be taken care of and avoid contagion from outside, especially that which comes from the other side of the River of the Silver
"National commitment goes beyond partisan labels," declared Mujica. "That's why we're here, this kind of strange union that doesn't exist in any country in the world: to try to help the new generations and that, despite all the differences, maintain their height and preserve that capital that I call 'us'".
Lacalle Herrera recommended "the protagonists of the electoral campaign to count to 10 before answering something attributed to them or a criticism". And he added: "Those of us in the profession know that after the last weekend in November there will be a government that I hope I like... but whether I like it or not , it's the government, and then let's reserve a little love and respect for it".
Sanguinetti, the first democratic president after a military dictatorship that fell in 1985, said he was "totally with the comrades". "That's why we're here, so that we don't get dragged down by the marginalities of the networks, the marginalities of politics, the marginality of society, and that we discuss what we have to discuss, let the candidates discuss, let the parties, parliamentarians and don't let us get dragged into all those side debates, that from the anonymity of the networks... from the viralization of a photo that we now don't know if it's real or if it was made with artificial intelligence, that we do not allow ourselves to be dragged into the debate by those forces and those phenomena that are there".
I spoke to several Uruguayan experts, including Mujica himself, to explain how they have managed to prevent politics from being reduced to a dirty game with no rules in which the responsibility to govern for the common good becomes, as it seems to be today in Spain, a secondary issue, almost forgotten.
There were three answers: Uruguayans do not invent unnecessary problems (I am thinking of Spain and the dramas surrounding Catalan independence); they patented social democracy in Latin America a hundred years ago (the Swedes came to learn from Uruguay), and they have been living for some time in the continent's most atheistic country. As a happy consequence, they explained to me, in Uruguay they are not captive to those old absolutist mental habits, loaded with moral indignation, which characterize so many Spanish politicians, whether they are believers or not.
The Uruguayan experience has been refreshing and that is why I returned to Spain a few days ago as I returned from Canada to the United States when I lived in Washington: with the feeling that I was returning to the jungle. To this I added, from my Spanish side, a sad mixture of envy and shame.
