AI won’t destroy us: It’s distracting us. Who’s pulling the strings of digital manipulation? Distraction from the point: Politics, AI, and “X and 0”
Every day, headlines bombard us with the same apocalyptic refrain: Artificial Intelligence will take our jobs, rewrite our society, or, in the worst-case scenario, destroy us. It’s a dramatic narrative, a commercially successful sci-fi nightmare.
But what if all this existential phobia is just a smokescreen? What if the real danger of AI isn’t that it will annihilate us, but that it’s already being used, right under our noses, as a weapon of disinformation by the very people who promise to regulate it?
It’s easy to get lost in the debate about deepfakes and self-thinking robots. It’s fascinating and, more importantly, a distraction from the point. The real problem is not general AI, but Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) intentionally used to pollute the public space.
Political elites and representatives of state structures have discovered in GAI the perfect tool to produce and distribute fake news and false narratives on an industrial scale about any sensitive topic, from “X” (say, an unpopular tax reform) to “0” (a corruption scandal that needs to be buried).
Why is it so difficult to combat this digital epidemic? The answer, as cynical as it is real, lies in the power structure.
We are promised laws, filters and technological solutions to cleanse the internet of manipulation. But you have touched on a crucial point: behind many of these troll accounts, click farms or bot networks are not just anonymous hackers, but interests directly linked to the political class and the state apparatus.
It's simple: if those who are supposed to make the rules are, directly or indirectly (through their families or loyal employees), the beneficiaries of the manipulation, why would they want to stop it?
The televised political scandals and the avalanche of contradictory information that we consume daily have a hidden purpose: to consume your precious time and, implicitly, your mental energy. When you are emotionally exhausted and confused by an endless cycle of irrelevant news, you are less able to focus on the real structural problems that affect your life. It is a strategy of attrition based on confusion
We should not fear that AI will become conscious and destroy us. We should fear the way conscious people use AI to manipulate us. The solution does not come from above, but from us, the citizens. It does not lie in a technical upgrade of the platforms, but in an upgrade of personal vigilance.