EDITORIAL

Use and misuse of artificial intelligence

Introduction

A topic that will be thematically addressed in this issue of our journal is Artificial Intelligence,
which has been considered in a rather ambiguous way during the last decades. For this reason,
it seems advisable to publish a rather extended Editorial with the view of offering analyses and
clarifications that will provide a rather clear frame for the discussion of such an important
topic.

The expression “artificial intelligence” has been around for many decades and today one no
longer perceives its exotic flavor that gave rise to interesting and important discussions in the early
days. However, it was clear from the outset that this expression directly denoted a broad field of en-
gineering and thus its direct meaning referred to the technological world in a broad sense, even
though the adjective “artificial” applied to the noun “intelligence” opened up many questions, es-
pecially about its impact on the way of conceiving a characteristic (that of intelligence) that the long
Western philosophical tradition had considered a property specifically possessed by humans. In
fact, as a branch of technology, artificial intelligence concerns, broadly speaking, the creation of
machines. Therefore, this expression easily induced the idea that advances in technology could
lead to the realization of intelligent machines, i.e., endowed with a property that no longer appeared
specific to humans. In fact, the expression “intelligent machine”’ spread easily, at the price of down-
grading intelligence to a lower ontological level. This downgrading, however, immediately entailed
an analogous downgrading of man: if intelligence is a quality that can be an attribute of machines,
the fact of being intelligent does not prevent conceiving man simply as a machine. Therefore, phi-
losophers were stimulated to find a different attribute that could better characterize human
nature.

Correspondence: Date of reception: 01-03-2023 Available online: 08-06-2023

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From intelligence to thought

As a consequence, it was preferred to take thinking as a specific human characteristic, and this
move produced a certain advantage, since the critical question regarding artificial intelligence was
often formulated as follows: “Can machines think?”, a question that appears difficult to answer in
the affirmative even regarding intelligent machines.

Nevertheless, a satisfactory answer to the question just mentioned relies on a satisfactory clari-
fication of the notion of thinking, and a reasonable move consists in consulting a discipline that
specifically studies thinking, i.e., psychology. The fact that psychology itself offers a display of dif-
ferent schools is not particularly important, because the concrete result consists in proposing a list
of terms used in psychology to denote human characteristics (such as “memory,” “deduction,” and
“calculation”) that are applied to intelligent machines, i.e., to computers. This practice is legitimate
if one remains aware that such terms have different meanings depending on the context, in which
they occur (i.e., the psychological context and the engineering context). We could say that such
terms, when applied to computers, should be used with inverted commas (“memory”, “deduction”.
And “calculation,” etc.), because they denote actions or behaviors that are clearly different in the
two contexts. Overlooking this condition amounts to accept that if two types of entities are capable
of doing the same things, they have in fact the same nature.

We shall see the arbitrariness of this tenet in the case, in which computers are equated with
human mind. This equation is proposed to use what is known regarding one domain to understand
and explain what happens in the other domain. It is clear that, to understand and explain the be-
havior of a computer, we do not need to make the use of knowledge regarding human conscious
mental activities, because the structure and functioning of the computer are fully understandable
on the basis of the physical laws and the results of information theory, whereas what is supposed
to be explained is the nature and functioning of the human conscious mind. Therefore, this paradox
situation could be overcome if we could rely upon something whose meaning is independent of
the context. This something exists and is the operations.

Operations

When the emphasis was shifted to the ability to operate, the identity of operations was proposed
as a sign of a fundamental identity of nature. Indeed, it should be noted in this regard that, even
in the field of human psychology, important steps had been taken since antiquity to determine op-
erations capable to characterize certain capacities of the mind. Such is the case with aristotelian
syllogistics, which had made it possible to schematize the possible operations on concepts that
appear in the premises and conclusion of a syllogism, highlighting which of these formal operations
on alphabetical letters reflect correct reasoning and which do not. The same applies to mathemat-
ical operations, also reduced to rules for manipulating letters and symbols, which are learned from
the elementary levels of education and gradually become more complicated in the branches of
higher mathematics.

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The advantage of operations is that they are defined as transitions from an initial “state of affairs”
to a final “state of affairs” independently of the nature of the agent that performs them and the manner,
in which they are performed; hence they can be used with the same meaning in different contexts.

Simulation and emulation by means of technology

After the clarifications provided, we can proceed to consider two fundamental ways of exploiting
technology, which we will call simulation and emulation. Simulation consists in using a certain tech-
nology to make an artifact that more or less faithfully reproduces certain operations of a given reality
or, as it is sometimes said, to make an artificial model of that reality, reflecting certain ways of its
functioning. The most widespread and ancient application of this process concerns the production
of children’s toys (such as dolls, cars, trains, and miniature weapons) that often have the appear-
ances and certain functions of “real” objects. For a long time, the purpose of this use of technology
was to amaze and amuse, i.e., it was essentially playful.

The emulative aspect of the use of technology consists in constructing artifacts capable of per-
forming certain human operations in a much more effective, rapid, and generally advantageous
manner; thus the animal-drawn wagon and then gradually the locomotives, automobiles, and aero-
planes have increased enormously the possibilities of moving persons and goods in the “real” world.
Similarly, the shift from verbal instructions to single letters or digits to represent numbers and
physical operations to “materialize” the mental operations of calculation have led from the abacuses
to the modern electronic computers that perform in seconds calculations that would require the
activity of many mathematicians working over several years.

The two modes of the use of technology (and thus, in particular, artificial intelligence) are of
equally important and distinct interest when applied to human beings. The simulative aspect, as
has already been said, consists in the proposal of a certain model that helps understand and ex-
plain certain characteristics of the human being on the basis of an analogy, but one must not forget
that the analogy never justifies claiming an identity of nature. To clarify this essential point, it is
sufficient to note that the image of an object that is fixed on the film of a camera may be analogous
to that which is fixed on the retina of an eye, and yet the camera does not see the object because
vision is a capacity of certain higher living beings, among which man is also to be found. This does
not detract from the fact that the presence of these models stimulated the imagination and ingenuity
of various intellectuals, who proposed the concept of the machine-animal and the machine-man,
such as Descartes and La Mettrie This was possible because some of these scholars prejudicially
held a materialist metaphysical conception, from which the admission of a non-strictly material di-
mension of the psyche and mind was excluded. This important philosophical implication does not,
however, minimize the usefulness of the concrete use of such analogies, for which it is sufficient
to mention the human-looking dummies (called patient simulators) that are used in medical educa-
tion today, so that students can also learn through practical exercise, working on these simulators
rather than on patients as was traditionally necessary.

The emulative aspect of technology (and thus also of artificial intelligence) largely dominates the
ways of thinking and living in “advanced” societies where it is seen as a manifestation of the

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unstoppable progress of human history. Indeed, based on the fact that modern technologies are
applications of scientific knowledge, it is easy to reason in this way: it is undeniable that today we
know much more and much better than our ancestors and can do many things that they could not
even imagine, and this progress is the result of advances in science and technology. This is an
impeccable line of reasoning since it concerns, in itself, simple possibilities, that is, the possibilities
of making good use of scientific and technological progress.

The materialist interpretation, however, was not the only proposal for reading the mechanical
models of the human being. Precisely, to avoid such an outcome, Descartes – who had outlined
one of the first models of the machine man – elaborated a dualist doctrine according to which the
human being is composed of two, substances, the material substance, characterized by its location
in space (res extensa) and the immaterial substance characterized by thought (res cogitans), which
includes not only the highest cognitive functions, but also moral conscience and free will. The study
of the extended substance is the exclusive task of the sciences and the disciplines that deal with
the thinking substance (whose study is the task of metaphysics and theology) must not interfere in
it. Such a theoretical separation cannot avoid the fact that in a very large number of human actions,
a reciprocal interaction between these two substances manifests itself quite clearly, and Cartesian
proposals to explain such an interaction proved unsatisfactory. Yet, this doctrine of interactionist
dualism has found advocates well into contemporary times. Today, this type of issue is referred to
as the mind–body problem and its most interesting treatments are those that focus on a typical
characteristic of the mind and attempt to relate it to certain conditions of human corporeality. Prom-
inent among these features is intentionality. With this, neurosciences encompass a broader field
than artificial intelligence, which, however, remains a particularly important part of them.

Technoscience and progress

Here, however, questions of fact arise: if we consider the 20th century, we must recognize that it
recorded the highest level in the field of science and technology compared to all the previous cen-
turies, but on the other hand, it is also the century that experienced two great world wars with the
loss of many millions of lives, the atrocities of the extermination camps, genocides, and the extension
of war operations even to the detriment of civilian populations. It would clearly not make sense to
place these two realities on the plates of an ideal historical scale, especially since critical reflections,
proposals for new values, projects for the defense not only of human rights, but even of the environ-
ment, were developing concurrently with these events. In other words, men have never ceased to
evaluate their own actions and the realities they have produced. The problem today, however, is the
difficulty of guaranteeing that these critical reflections on the ends and values of human life are lis-
tened to, and on this point, we note the limited possibility of influence enjoyed by the traditional in-
struments that were family and school education, good reading, and the precepts of religions.

Today, young people believe that they can find knowledge, assessments, practical advice entirely
on their own, even to guide their life choices, without having recourse to those traditional sources
that, although limited, used to offer some guarantees of reliability. It is precisely on this point that
artificial intelligence can give the illusion of being able to offer this knowledge without undergoing
the labors of the past but simply by exploiting automatic search tools denoted by the expression
machine learning.
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Critical evaluation of technological progress

Taking it for granted that the good use of technology is primarily concerned with the purposes
for which it is employed, we cannot ignore, however, the unintended consequences of its very
successes. Indeed, a technology that emulates a human activity often leads to the replacement of
human beings employed in that activity, causing them to lose their jobs. This is a well-known his-
torical phenomenon that accompanied the industrial revolution, and artificial intelligence, by con-
siderably increasing the number and level of professional groups affected by this phenomenon,
causes social problems of great complexity, and affects the prospects for the future of our societies.
These problems are silenced by the advertising with which the new technologies are offered. An-
other aspect on which advertising relies is security. This is no longer limited to the fact that it is
possible to entrust an intelligent machine with dangerous tasks and prevent human beings from
being assigned to them. Today, artificial intelligence makes it possible to be protected by surveil-
lance devices and even such that criminals can be recognized within a large mass of people. In
this field, the most advanced technological tool is facial recognition, which makes it possible to
store people’s physiognomies in big databases and to recognize them among the perpetrators of
a crime, but also, for instance, among participants in large mass demonstrations. It is obvious how
authoritarian regimes can use this tool to control and repress dissent, bypassing the guarantees
of secrecy (but through corrupt practices, also other organizations can access these databases).

Even leaving these considerations aside, the attack on people’s privacy inherent in such artificial
intelligence products is more important: even people who “have nothing to hide” are still entitled
to an intimate sphere, reserved to their subjectivity, but this is precisely what science and technol-
ogy exclude in the name of objectivity.

The negative effects of machine learning

Let us conclude with some thoughts on the possible negative effects that machine learning may
have on the intellectual and creative potential of humans.

We have already noted that young people today seem to believe that they can learn on their own
as much as they wish, without going through the traditional paths of the study within institutions
whose reliability was controlled and guaranteed. This idea that one can arrive at knowledge without
studying is fed by the illusion that, to know a certain thing, it is enough to be able to surf the In-
ternet to find all the information that interests us. Such a practice must be considered a misuse of
artificial intelligence because it ignores the fundamental fact that knowledge is a personal asset
that comes from having acquired, memorized, and organized according to conceptual links of var-
ious kinds a set of notions, i.e., information with which a meaning is associated. If I do not know
the date of birth of a certain scientist, I may find it on the Internet but, having found it, I can forget
it because I know I could always find it again in the same way. This means that it is not part of my
knowledge unless I fix it in my memory and place it in a context of knowledge, in which it performs
a certain function. In other words, it is not true that all knowledge can be found on the web and
that it is enough to be able to trace its components without the effort of study.

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This is not to say that reliable and valuable sites do not exist on the Internet, but it is necessary
for the user to have sufficient skills to be able to recognize them and take advantage of the rich
help he can find to enrich his knowledge. In fact, artificial intelligence is not concerned with this
personal growth but seeks to offer tools that can be used for different purposes through the de-
velopment of ever more refined algorithms and the availability of enormous databases.

The versatility of the algorithms offered makes it possible to write a literary article, as well as a
legal essay, a musical composition in the classical style, a poem, as well as much more specialized
applications requested by companies.

The fundamental fact is that all this happens on the basis of automatic connections that emerge
with particular frequency in the large databases of these giants that also exploit the great storage
capacities of the clouds. All this happens by automatic mechanisms, without any intervention of
creativity and therein lies the limit of these astonishing technologies: the advancement of knowledge
always requires the creative intuition of a human mind rich in knowledge and endowed with a crit-
ical sense and the ability to produce new ideas, which machine learning cannot offer. However, it
is true that people become unable to perform these tasks if they do not keep their mind active and
looking for new knowledge instead of enjoying the comfortable services of the most advanced
products of artificial intelligence. Furthermore, for the mind holds that capacities that are not used
inexorably decline.

Additional note

I would like to end this editorial by sincerely thanking Dr. María de la Luz Casas Martínez for her
work and support in the development of Bioethics UPdate, as Chief of the Redaction Committee
since its foundation in 2015. She has contributed with her invaluable work and commitment to
making this a consolidated project.

Dr. Lourdes Velázquez González, in addition to her professional capacity, has for years had a
deep interest in our journal, having collaborated as an author, reviewer, and member of the Re-
daction Committee. As of March this year, she is the new Chief of the Redaction Committee of
Bioethics UPdate.

Nota adicional

Aprovecho la ocasión para agradecer a la Dra. María de la Luz Casas Martínez, por su trabajo
y apoyo en el desarrollo de Bioethics UPdate, como Jefe del Consejo de Redacción de la misma
desde su fundación en el año 2015, contribuyendo con su invaluable labor y compromiso profe-
sional a hacer de esta, un proyecto consolidado.

A partir del mes de marzo de este año, la Dra. Lourdes Velázquez González, autora y revisora
de varios artículos publicados en la revista, además de miembro del Consejo de Redacción, ha
asumido la coordinación editorial de Bioethics UPdate.