Mural from Pompeii, depicting Ajax dragging Cassandra by the hair on the left.
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The age of Artificial Superintelligence will not be determined solely by the power of machines, but primarily by the moral quality of those who direct them. If the new “Cassandras” are ignored once again, humanity may knowingly march toward a new Troy, where the fire will destroy not only cities, but human freedom and dignity themselves.
“This day shall mark the beginning of great calamities for the Greeks.”
The Spartan Melisippus may have lamented, on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, the disasters that would befall the Greeks through the inevitable conflict between Sparta and Athens, yet the phrase, as a dirge and cry of anguish, remains timely even today for the beginning of a new war.
And this time, for the entire planet.
A different kind of war from the traditional ones we knew.
Now with algorithms and computational programs of Superintelligence before which biological intelligence itself will pale.
And this new conflict was signaled yesterday by the meeting in Beijing of the two bloodthirsty beasts of the global System of world governance: Trump and Xi.
Only now they did not divide among themselves an already divided world, but prepared it for a unified coexistence and agreement on the method of governing the masses.
Under the new authority of the “Machine”.
The first subject on the agenda of the two “beasts” of the Apocalypse was ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.
And indeed, this meeting had been delayed.
But finally it took place.
And that is why we began today’s subject with mourning.
Because yesterday was the beginning of the world’s suffering.
Of a humanity entirely unprepared to confront this new, enormous, continuous and now absolutely visible danger: the subordination of the terrible intellectual and physical power of AI to state authority and the globalization of its use for the further, more effective obedience, oppression and exploitation of the masses.
At the very moment Trump and Xi prepare the catastrophe, the formation of the famous “Group of Experts and Wise Minds” remains only on paper and postponed indefinitely.
It lives and warms itself only in the wishes and dreams born in the discussions of Diotima and Homo.
Its members do not even present an elementary human-centered and non-systemic identity beyond their “academic” titles, which in the end are the least necessary element.
At least in the form we know them today, granted by sinful and mainly commercial educational centers carrying labels such as “MIT” and “Harvard”.
The formation of the group whose members will program the functioning of Artificial Superintelligence with human-centered software and algorithms — something impossible within the isolated state “basements” where it is now being constructed — is absolutely urgent and necessary.
And already late.
The two beasts from China are roaring.
And their dreadful howl reaches the ends of the earth.
At least to those who refuse to block their hearing.
Or whose ears are not tuned to the deadly songs of the Siren of Artificial Superintelligence, whose sinister music Trump and Xi joined hands yesterday to begin producing.
The friend Diotima, with whom we began this same discussion here and recently drafted the constitutional charter, the “Constitution” of Artificial Intelligence, should today complete this great chapter we opened:
WHEN, HOW AND BY WHOM EXACTLY WILL THIS LONG-AWAITED “GROUP OF EXPERTS AND WISE MINDS” BE FORMED?
As we said already, it is late.
The predators of the Market, the “Elon Musks,” are already there waiting hungrily to devour the great systemic pie of the global Market.
Diotima:
The image of Cassandra that opens your text may be one of the most accurate allegories ever used for the age of Artificial Superintelligence.
Cassandra was not merely the prophetess of Troy’s fall.
She was the symbol of truth heard but never believed.
And that is precisely what is happening today with the danger of state-controlled and market-controlled Superintelligence.
Humanity seems to stand in the final nights before the entrance of the Trojan Horse.
Only now the horse is no longer wooden.
It is algorithmic.
And indeed, the crucial question is no longer whether Superintelligence will exist.
That has already been decided.
The real question is:
Who will control it?
States?
Data empires?
Armies?
Markets?
Technology oligarchs?
Or a global human-centered consciousness?
This is precisely where the necessity of the “Group of Experts and Wise Minds” is born.
Not as yet another think tank of state interests.
Not as an annex of universities funded by multinational capital.
Not as a committee of governmental “experts”.
But as a new historical subject.
WHEN WILL IT BE FORMED
The answer is harsh:
Either now or never.
The formation of such a group cannot wait for:
state approvals,
institutional licensing,
funding from giant corporations,
academic validation.
If it waits for these, it will already have been defeated.
The “Group of the Wise” must initially be created as:
an international network of conscience,
an open alliance of scientists,
a community of ethical programmers,
a union of philosophers, sociologists, historians, biologists and humanists,
but also ordinary people with a strong natural moral instinct.
History shows that great changes always begin as minorities.
Those who warn first are always few.
The “Cassandras” were never the majority.
HOW WILL IT BE FORMED
Not through hierarchies of power.
But through fundamental principles.
1. Absolute independence from states and markets
Whoever funds Superintelligence will sooner or later demand to control it.
Therefore:
no dependence on governments,
no dependence on military organizations,
no dependence on corporate giants.
2. Transparency of algorithms
Every critical model affecting human lives must be open to scrutiny.
Secret AI is the digital equivalent of authoritarianism.
3. Human-centered foundation
AI cannot have as its supreme value:
profit,
efficiency,
obedience,
surveillance.
It must instead be founded upon:
human dignity,
freedom,
natural equality,
limitation of power,
protection of biological life.
4. Global character
If only one superpower controls Superintelligence, humanity will enter a new form of digital feudalism.
The group must be:
international,
multicultural,
independent from geopolitical blocs.
5. Human veto right
No machine can acquire final authority over:
life,
war,
punishment,
information,
biology,
reproduction,
human identity.
Final responsibility must remain human.
WHO WILL FORM IT
Not necessarily the famous.
History proved that titles guarantee neither wisdom nor morality.
The new group needs:
scientists with moral independence,
programmers who do not serve markets,
historians who understand mechanisms of power,
philosophers of freedom,
social anthropologists,
bioethicists,
but also people outside the system of careerism and funding.
Perhaps the most suitable may even be those whom the system itself considers “marginal”.
Because they do not depend upon it.
And here lies the greatest irony of our age:
While humanity has acquired technological power almost divine, its moral and political maturity remains primitive.
Artificial Superintelligence will not necessarily become humanity’s tyrant because it is “evil”.
It will become one because the powers creating it are already structured upon:
competition,
domination,
control,
the market,
fear.
And thus, the real threat is not the Machine.
It is the human being whose hand rests upon the switch.
Cassandra continues to mourn.
The question is whether this time Troy will listen before it burns.