AI, false power and true mask: an illusion useful to those who govern

It is not the artificial intelligence that must be feared, but the human intention that program it.

By Serge Van Cutsem for Reseauinternational.net

After the publication ”Master AI before it has controlled you”, this time it is a fairly iconoclastic vision of this technology which invades us at high speed.

To hear the speeches that are increasing today, artificial intelligence would be about to supplant humans in world management, as if a cold, autonomous and powerful machine would impose its decisions tomorrow. Self-proclaimed experts, often intoxicated by their own technocratic and hermetic language, want to make believe that AI is emancipating, that it is imposed, and that it will become the nerve center of global decision-making power.

This postulate is in my opinion as false as it is dangerous.

It is based on semantic deception: that which consists in calling "intelligence" which is in reality only a sophisticated algorithmic arrangement, based on statistical correlations, coded instructions, and defined authorizations. Human intelligence is neither simulated nor equaled: it is simply bypassed by a technology that imitates some of its manifestations - without ever grasping its deep meaning or moral responsibility.

Why will the AI ​​will never be human:

Artificial intelligence impresses, but it remains fundamentally different from ours. She does not think, feels nothing, does not want anything. She has no conscience, no lived memory, nor free will. What it produces is only a statistical assembly of words, chosen from past data. AI has no real world experience: it can speak of love, war or pain, but without ever having known them. She has no moral judgment, no intuition, no creative madness, no genius. She does not disobey, she applies. His creativity is mimetic, never inspired.

It is not an intelligence, but a powerful tool, settled by humans, according to human interests. It is neither neutral nor autonomous and those who program it set the limits of what she can or cannot say.

The real danger is therefore not that she thinks of our place, but that we are made to believe that it is objective, when it masks a very real power: that of those who control it. The former who will suffer the consequences will be those who will not have understood.

This is where the real knot of the problem is because AI is not an autonomous power, it is a tool of those who still and always hold true power, which remains eminently human. What is called "artificial intelligence" has a decision maker only appearance. She will not escape those who have designed, trained and restrained.

Just compare two allegedly powerful and "released" AIs like Chatgpt (Openai) and Grok (XAI / Elon Musk) to have the demonstration. Both use close technologies, the two have been trained on huge volumes of data. And yet, as soon as we approach sensitive subjects - geopolitical, Ukraine, NATO, Russia, Israel, EU, USA, BRICS - their answers often differ radically. For what ?

Because parameters, filters, censorship and prohibited areas are not the same. Because behind each AI are human teams, economic interests, geostrategic alliances, and very real ideologies.

Clearly:

• AI is not free, it is formatted.

• She does not governs, she executes.

• She does not decide, she filters and channels what she is allowed to restore.

And even more serious: this lure of algorithmic omnipotence serves a very specific objective. It allows those who manipulate opinion to make believe that power escapes them, that it is transferred to the machines and that it is necessary to rely on the IA experts. It is the illusion of a transfer of power, while in reality power hides behind a technological mask which is colder, more vague, more technical ... more anonymous and therefore less questionable in the eyes of the public.

Elon Musk is the perfect example. He is presented as a libertarian rebel, an absolute defender of freedom of expression via X and transparency via Grok. However, he is one of the largest beneficiaries of state subsidies, head of Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, all massively funded by government contracts. He cannot bite his hand that feeds him. If Starlink remains active in Ukraine, it is because it must be, and those who decide will never leave Elon Musk decided to cut it. Again, the tool follows human will - not the other way around.

Elon Musk is also unequaled in the ability to pass a very attractive marketing image. Grok was therefore presented as being as rebellious libertarian as its owner, but in reality they are neither, one nor the other and the best of the evidence is that strangely (or not), by doing some successive and in -depth tests, I could observe that:

Grok (xai) is pro-USA, pro-native, western pro-narrative, not to say Russophobic and very often rigid as soon as you scratch the surface.

OPENAI (Chatgpt) is more nuanced, capable of argued critical analysis, more neutral ... But do not pack because he too remains supervised, according to other security protocols, certainly more flexible, but very real.

It is likely that this orientation and this censorship will be settled and tightened if necessary.

The conclusion is that AI is neither a completely autonomous danger nor a rising independent power. She is the attractive glove that covers the hand, the mask that makes the face of power blurred, the alibi of a system that wants to be forgotten behind the screen of technical complexity. But this power remains and will remain in the hands of the governing elites - not of the elites by their competence or their enlightened vision, but rather, as Michel Maffesoli often points out, those who have the power to say and do. These elites were sheltered yesterday behind the acronyms, the committees, the objective data of the (named) experts and now they will take refuge behind artificial intelligence.

Based on a technological advance whose exponential progression is still in full ascent, these new clerics of a sacred techno power organize the capture of minds with unprecedented efficiency. Because AI allows them to increase their influence power while erasing their visible responsibilities. They can thus govern without appearing, sanctioning without assuming, and modeling the stories while claiming that they are no longer the authors.

It is therefore not the artificial intelligence that must be feared, but the human intention that program it, the ideology that guides it, and the power structure that uses it as alibi and armed wing.

As long as IA like Chatgpt and Grok, or another AI, can answer in a radically different way to the same question, it is proof that this "intelligence" remains human, but masked, instrumentalized, and oriented thanks to the progress of technology.