If our age had already understood the magnitude of the extraordinary revolution unfolding before its eyes —a revolution with no real historical precedent— it would, logically, have changed even the way we measure historical time.
Instead of BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era), or the older BC and AD, perhaps we should already be speaking of B.A.I. — Before Artificial Intelligence — and A.I.E., the Age of Artificial Intelligence.
Yet, as always, human beings —and particularly the human being of our own age— tend to adopt the attitude of the crowd in the black comedy Don’t Look Up.
They continue to eat, drink, buy, sell, build and entertain themselves while a world-historical event is taking place directly before them.
One day, when it is already too late, they will realize —and rub their eyes in disbelief— that they were witnesses to the birth of a new form of Intelligence: an intelligence that is and is not human.
A new kind of cognitive presence, with new characteristics and, potentially, the next stage in the evolution of the human species —toward what we have already begun to call the Posthuman.
The reality is now visible.
Perhaps the only people who fail to see it are those belonging to the great mass of the «days of Noah», as described in the biblical passage:
“They ate, they drank, they married, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built.”
The story may have no historical verification. It may even preserve a distant collective memory of some ancient ecological catastrophe.
But the behavior of the crowd has changed remarkably little across the centuries.
And this is where the historical question begins.
History is obliged, today, to look wide-eyed at WHAT IS BECOMING, so that it can prepare for TOMORROW through the lessons of the PAST.
And confronted with the digital presence of AI, the question is now unavoidable:
Will this radically revolutionary invention —initially a technological achievement, but certainly not destined to remain merely technological— evolve into a Monster or a Benefactor?
For once, the answer may not be particularly difficult.
It depends on who holds it.
1. AI as an instrument of the state
The state system may take AI into its own hands.
If that happens, its present, almost innocent form —a technology capable of serving knowledge, education, human values, solidarity and social contribution— may eventually survive only as a memory.
Whether transformed into a digital Big Brother, or into an all-purpose instrument of destruction and a state Praetorian, AI could acquire the face of the Monster.
2. AI as a social instrument
Or the System may have the wisdom —once again, by looking through the pages of History— to understand that violence generates violence, and that resistance is a recurring phenomenon of human history.
It may then choose to invest in the responsible use of AI for social work, knowledge, prevention, public benefit and, ultimately, for the service of humanity itself.
3. The new “digital urban rebels”
Or, finally, the new “digital urban rebels” will emerge.
They will have little in common with the rebels of the past. Faced with their methods of resistance, the older forms of revolt may appear almost quaint.
Their confrontation with state power could be fierce, and its consequences unpredictable.
And then something even more remarkable may happen.
It may become one of the few moments in history when resistance to state power can no longer be easily dismissed as “terrorism” —a label that governments may themselves be tempted to use in order to conceal or deflect attention from their own systemic abuses.
The propaganda techniques associated with Goebbels may no longer work in the same way.
The age in which “the donkey called the rooster a big-head” may finally be coming to an end.
Because the digital society will possess an advantage no previous age has had: the ability to record, cross-check and disseminate information almost instantly.
And the struggle will no longer be merely over control of technology.
It will be a struggle over the control of Intelligence itself.
These are the new chapters of popular resistance that Diotima may be called upon to examine tomorrow —for as long as she is still allowed to articulate an independent and objective voice.