As I write, I look at the bottle of water that I have on the table, and I think that we always end up finding out about things, but too late, when only the consequences remain, and that this can be the worst of the effects of noise. A few years ago Europe decided that, to better manage waste, plastic bottle caps should be attached to the rest of the packaging, and here I am, wondering when everyday life changed and why I never read about it. Did it happen weeks ago? Have I been scratching my face with killer dolphin plugs for months now? I guess the usual thing happened: we were warned so much in advance, we received so many reminders and we paid so little attention to them that we lost the right to be surprised by having to go to the celebration of those golden wedding just this weekend, like if its protagonists had not quietly warned us for 50 years. It also happens with science and the big questions of the world. Without leaving my desk, it is difficult to justify that a person informed about the dangers of microplastics continues to use those containers.
What important issues are we ignoring the signs of? I know that one of them is the construction of a revolutionary technology on an incorrect ideology, and that this will determine the distribution of wealth in the future in a way that we do not yet know, but that does not seem to be going to be good for women. Let’s not be fooled by the literalness of artificial intelligence (AI). ChatGPT will tell us that it cannot tell discriminatory jokes because that “perpetuates harmful stereotypes and contributes to gender inequality,” but there the speaker is the layer of correction added to maintain minimal appearances. We should not focus on what AI says, but on what it does, or rather, what is done in its name: keep women away from big business by turning them into victims.
AI is programmed, researched, financed, used and profitable by a male majority. Silicon Valley culture is ridiculously toxic. Language models have been fed with the contents of an internet with a profound sexist bias. It is understandable that in that environment Sam Altman felt legitimized to steal Scarlett Johansson’s voice and thus feed his marketing fantasy that ChatGPT would sound like the movie. Her. The actress is a symbol of digital violence, from which she has been suffering for a long time. In 2011, a hacker leaked his intimate photos on the internet. In 2018, she was a pioneer in denouncing the problem of porn created without consent, deepfakes, multiplied from 2022 with the leap in the generative image and which affects young women above all. The artificial revolution is being slower than expected in politics or employment, but to undress Johansson, Rosalía, Laura Escanes or Aitana it was very fast. Also to anonymous girls, even minors, as in the case of the Almendralejo institute, one of the first in the world.
We should pay more attention to these beginnings, because when a harmful culture takes root it is as difficult to tear out as those new plastic caps, and in a few years we will wonder where we were looking, how it could have happened, and we will not understand where women are hiding in internet and why girls continued not wanting to study technology, perpetuating an unfair system, and they will respond that they have been too busy trying to defend themselves against it.
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