ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL NOT DESTROY US

No artificial scent comes close to the natural. No artificial colour approaches the natural, nor does any artificial flavour get recognised by the body as natural. Nature will never be replicated by outsiders. Machines, algorithms and humans are all incapable of matching nature's intelligence, for they are all, without exception, limited. However many terabytes become petabytes, they will never reach one thousandth of the complexity of organic life.

What we call Artificial Intelligence — or Data Intelligence — is nothing more than yet another process of information and communication. In antiquity, that process was carried out through bonfires and smoke signals. Then came drums, flags, whistles, bottles cast to sea, symbols carved into stone. The telegraph alarmed those accustomed to letters carried by ships. Radio arrived threatening to destroy humanity with its terrifying invisible signals — which, of course, it did not. Destruction was then promised by television, a radio with pictures — catastrophe. Computers would finally bring the world to its end. They did not. But now, there is no way out: AI will destroy humanity.

In the seventies, computers were enormous. By the nineties, considerably smaller. Today they fit inside spy buttons. In China, they already rest in people's hands in the form of chips beneath the skin. Soon they will be applied to the retina the moment a child is born. The thirst for control is insatiable. The evolution of AI is simply the defining symbol of the 21st century — one that will be surpassed by another in the 22nd. Humanity will not perish because of AI, just as it did not perish because of the telegraph or television. Humanity will be extinguished by nature — the very same nature that has sheltered it for millions of years.

This conclusion is self-evident and requires no great elaboration. One need only look around. Humans represent a mere 0.01% of all living beings on this planet. Plants, trees and vegetation account for 82%. Separating humans from other animals, we represent just 0.4% of the total of wild creatures, domesticated animals, fish, birds and fungi.

We are the minority of species, yet we carry the arrogance of gods. We believe in a power capable of bending the universe to our will — and so we build tools to secure that dominion. Language was among the first. The power of communication through voice. Those without a voice were eliminated.

Nature, silent until wounded, accompanies us with patience. It knows our ignorance as lesser beings, our severed connection to the earth, our excess of concrete, steel and algorithms. It knows all of this — and occasionally sends warning signs: fire, water, wind and earth. It erases civilisations with its tsunamis, redirects rivers and turns seas into deserts. And yet, amid all the noise, the warnings go unheeded. To nature, a century is but a day. Its strategy is simply to wait — and to let humans dig their own graves. AI, and whatever forms of data transmission come after it, have no place in that graveyard. AI will not destroy us. As in any process of evolution, the minority will be extinguished by the majority. On that point, Darwin was right.