Seventy-eight years ago, on the 15th of February 1946, the first electronic computer, the ENIAC, was publicly inaugurated. The existence of a previously classified project became front-page news in the New York Times. What we often call the “digital revolution” had started.
“Digital Revolution”: it is a fine expression, which I have often used myself. However, recently I have started to use an alternative expression – in my view more explicative – to describe the same phenomenon: February 1946 marks the beginning of the computerization of the world.
In this regard, the technologies that today we call “Artificial Intelligence” represent the current stage of a historical process that started three generations ago and which will continue for the foreseeable future.
By “Computerization of the World” I mean a process of proliferation of computers not only in laboratories, large companies and State organizations (initial phase, approximately 1946-1976), but also – after the availability of cheap and increasingly powerful integrated circuits – in small businesses, homes, schools, civil society organizations (second phase, approximately 1976-1996).
It is, however, only during the last thirty years – third phase, starting in mid 1990’s, around the time when the Internet started to reach the general public – that the computerization of the world really began to take off.
In 2024, thanks to the advances in miniaturization, to the reduction of costs and to widespread wireless connectivity, the computerization of the world has progressed to the point that:
- the majority of human beings on the planet owns one or more hyperpersonal computers known as smartphones;
- an increasing share of objects and machines are “smart”, which is shorthand for “computerized and connected to the Internet” (smart TV, smart fridges, smart scales, smart lamps, smart watches, etc.);
- an increasing share of spaces – both public and private – are also computerized and connected to the Internet (smart city, smart cameras, smart assistants, smart meters, etc.).
On the one hand, therefore, most human beings have been computerized, in the sense that they must have a technological extension – the smartphone – to work, study, travel, buy, etc. It is the first time in history that human beings need to own a specific machine to be a functioning, recognized member of society.
Objects and spaces, on the other hand, by becoming computerized have changed their ontological status: from passive to active, from generally understandable to potentially opaque, from determined by local forces to potentially actionable by remote actors.
Now we have entered a fourth phase, the age of Artificial Intelligence. Ever more data, ever more computational power, ever more advanced techniques have been producing outstanding results in several fields, as well as many questions and worries.
Overall, the computerization of the world represents a massive change for humanity, a change which we have only started to understand at the social, political, psychological, even anthropological level.
After almost 80 years, with these new AI-related developments and in a international scenario marked by challenges of unprecedented scale – climate warming and geopolitical tensions, just to mention two – it is high time to pause and think seriously about the computerization of the world, not just taking it for granted as it has being rolled out so far.
First of all, how has the process of “computerization of the world” been conducted so far?
In a strongly centralized fashion. Behind smartphones, smart objects and smart spaces, in fact, are generally just a few companies, which have become the largest and most influential companies in the world. It is them who have built the immense infrastructure (data centers, submarine cables, etc.) that makes the digital world possible. Artificial Intelligence, with its need for huge investments, is now further reinforcing this hyper-centralized structure.
Among nations, the computerization of the world has produced profound differences. Many countries – including important ones, also in Europe – are essentially digital colonies. By that, I mean that they do not control the crucial infrastructures that have always been considered essential features of sovereign political entities, i.e., the infrastructures that allow the communication, the archival and the processing of information (we could call them, in short, the C.A.P. infrastructures).
What for? The computerization of the world has been performed mostly for private profit. Many positive benefits for all, to be sure, but also several troubling consequences, at various levels. Moreover, many collective problems and collective opportunities have been left unaddressed simply because there was little expectation of profits to be made.
If we look at the next 20 years, what should we strive to attain?
Focusing on the international dimension, in my view
- we should strive to facilitate the digital development and autonomy of each State. No more digital colonialism;
- we should establish UN-level procedures and processes to address the risk of using the computerization of the world, and especially Artificial Intelligence, for military purposes. In particular, the risk of widespread deployment of autonomous, AI-powered weapons is very real, and in part already a troubling reality. Just like in the past century we established international ways to contain chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, now we should make sure to that the current work done in Geneva to contain the risk of AI-enabled warfare begets an international, binding Treaty;
- Finally, we should seek international collaboration to address global problems: climate warming, migrations, economic development, trade, ecc. In this sense, among other things, we should entartain the idea of powering UN-level institutions to pool data, skills and computational resources to address global needs and opportunities.
In other words, the computerization of the world in the AI age should be shaped:
- to support the peaceful co-existence of nations,
- to facilitate economic and cultural development of all nations and
- to empower international collaboration to address common challenges.
I would like to conclude this brief note with the words that Dag Hammarskjöld – the Secretary General of the United Nations from 1953 until his tragic death in 1961 – pronounced in India in 1956:
“It is no news to anybody, but we sense it in different degrees, that our world of today is more than ever before one world. The weakness of one is the weakness of all, and the strength of one – not the military strength, but the real strength, the economic and social strength, the happiness of people – is indirectly the strength of all.”
In the wake of the horrors of the Second War World, Hammarskjöld’s vision was shared by a vast majority of human beings. Seventy-nine years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we need to recover such vision and make it our own. It is not only possible, but also necessary, in the digital domain as well as in all others, if we want to avoid the risk of another global, self-destructive catastrophe.
December 2024