This provocative title exposes one of the multiple challenges we face with the implementation and expansion of various technologies around Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Any technology today, since we haven't yet crossed the singularity, i.e. the point at which technology will be capable of self-perception, autonomous consciousness and intrinsic determination to follow its most linear desires, such as self-preservation, is still neutral. Francisco Guerreiro

In other words, their use by the human species still determines their objectivity, usefulness and impact (socially, economically and culturally positive or negative). For the time being, these technological advances will be based on rules and controls, also due to their degree of risk.

Today, and rightly so, the European Union is the first transnational bloc to legislate on AI, with an agreement having been reached between the European Commission, the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of the European Union (EU) in December 2023 on a legislative package called the "EU AI ACT". This legislation, which was recently approved in a joint vote by the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) and the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE), is now awaiting a final vote in the April plenary.

And, contrary to silly nationalist views, the EU has been a pioneer, to be applauded, in the coordinated and strategic legislation of AI in this phased and calculated transition, as far as possible, towards a more digital economic and social system.

Just as today we live connected to the Internet, in the future we may not live without AI. And so, as an MEP, I was part of the majority that decided to legislate on the future of AI in order to ensure that it was Human centred and had different degrees of risk. With unacceptable risk, therefore banned, we have the creation of deep fakes, such as indiscriminate use in facial recognition and biometric analysis in databases and in real time, but also the elimination of its use in social scores (social credit system /social scores). In short, depending on the degree of risk, legislation bans, restricts or regulates the product, activity or sector.

This path means that it is up to us, including within international institutions, to control the future of this technology which, if used well, will have positive effects on the socio-economic fabric, on companies and on the daily lives of citizens, but which, if used for hegemonic ends, will dictate the end of free and democratic societies.

But more than what has been debated and voted on within the EU, we need to talk, to plan and to know where we are heading as a society. Above all, by opening up this conversation to people who are less educated on the subject. The ethical issue surrounding the use of AI is of fundamental importance, especially when the destinies of humanity seem to be directed by small groups and technological gurus rather than national and supranational political institutions. This is because, if we consider that human existence is based on communitarianism (calm down, it's not the same as communism), co-operation, interdependence and the exponentiation of human experiences and relationships, the existential question arises: "Where are we heading as a whole?"

Contrary to capitalist and neoliberal theories and practices, which suggest and impose on us that the sum of individualities will create a prosperous collective mass, and that mostly through consumption we will achieve existential fulfilment, human evolution shows us the opposite. We are socio-economically interconnected and we need, in a fair social contract, individual freedoms to be guaranteed and our existential independence to be strengthened, always with a profound civic and political debate that includes as many participants as possible. It should never be an elite, much less a technological elite, that manages and decides our future. Otherwise we will always be treated like these individuals, mere products to be traded.

Relatedly, we are bombarded daily with circumstantial news and endless hours of commentators who are experts on everything and nothing, peppered with widespread disinformation on social media, without centralising the debate on the existential impacts of these disruptive technologies.

In other words, what will the growth of AI ultimately be used for? To reduce the labour burden? To increase business and industrial productivity? To share the wealth generated? To guarantee more access to goods and services at lower environmental and economic costs? To protect our freedom from totalitarian security? Move us towards a technocratic tyranny? Facilitate the automation and robotisation of conflicts? Physically integrate with human biology?

I remember this lack of a path and limits, even if conceptual and with the EU having legislated on the subject, when in Japan, as a member of the IMCO committee and on an official visit from the EP, I asked an executive of a multinational technology company where the company's red line would be in terms of AI development, as well as what their position was on Transhumanism (which could even generate a race to implant brain chips that use AI in order to transform the human cognitive process, giving it unimaginable technological capabilities). His answer, as well as that of the whole room, was a resounding "we don't know".

I therefore believe that the ultimate goal of AI, and of technology in general, has yet to be debated. This is because, although there are already some centres of debate about which path we should take as a society, the voracity of this social, economic and cultural model, which is attached to individualism, consumerism and infinite growth (a physical impossibility in any healthy and balanced ecosystem), will dictate that we will continue to widen the gap between those who have more resources, power, access and guarantees, and the rest. Because that's how deep the political and existential debate is today. Practically non-existent.

It is therefore urgent that we centre the conversation around this and any other technology from the perspective of what society we want to build and what role the human being plays in it. I conclude with the provocation with which I began this article. Will AI decide our political destinies in the near future? Perhaps if we maintain this dysfunctional social, economic and cultural paradigm. But one thing is certain. If so, human existence will be dystopian and tyrannical.