Inteligência artificial vs estupidez humana

Desde que regressei do Fórum Económico Mundial deste ano, em Davos, que me tenho sido insistentemente questionado sobre as minhas principais conclusões. Um dos temas mais debatidos este ano foi a inteligência artificial, em particular a IA generativa (GENAI). Com a recente adopção de grandes modelos de linguagem (como o que é utilizado pelo CHATGPT), há muita esperança – e sensacionalismo – sobre a forma de «como a IA pode ajudar a desenvolver a produtividade e o crescimento económico no futuro».

Para analisar esta questão, temos de ter em linha de conta que a estupidez humana é bem mais predominante no mundo do que a IA. A proliferação de mega-ameaças – elementos de uma policrise mais abrangente – confirma que os nossos políticos são demasiado disfuncionais e as nossas medidas políticas demasiado desorientadas para conseguirem enfrentar até os riscos mais sérios e óbvios que se colocam perante o nosso futuro. Estes riscos incluem alterações climáticas, que terão custos económicos avultados, estados colapsados, tornando as vagas de refugiados climáticos ainda maiores e recorrentes, pandemias virulentas, que poderão ter efeitos económicos ainda mais nocivos do que a covid-19.

Only the Middle East Can Fix the Middle East

The Path to a Post-American Regional Order

Foreign Affairs

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1 March 2024

In the early weeks of 2024, as the catastrophic war in the Gaza Strip began to inflame the broader region, the stability of the Middle East appeared to be once again at the center of the U.S. foreign policy agenda. In the initial days after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, the Biden administration moved two aircraft carrier strike groups and a nuclear-powered submarine to the Middle East, while a steady stream of senior U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden, began making high-profile trips to the region. Then, as the conflict became more difficult to contain, the United States went further. In early November, in response to attacks on U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed groups, the United States conducted strikes on weapons sites in Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; in early January, U.S. forces killed a senior commander of one of these groups in Baghdad. And in mid-January, after weeks of attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea by the Houthi movement, which is also supported by Iran, the United States, together with the United Kingdom, initiated a series of strikes on Houthi strongholds in Yemen.Despite this show of force, it would be unwise to bet on the United States’ committing major diplomatic and security resources to the Middle East over the longer term. Well before Hamas’s October 7 attacks, successive U.S. administrations had signaled their intent to shift away from the region to devote more attention to a rising China. The Biden administration has also been contending with Russia’s war in Ukraine, further limiting its bandwidth for coping with the Middle East. By 2023, U.S. officials had largely given up on a revived nuclear agreement with Iran, seeking instead to reach informal de-escalation arrangements with their Iranian counterparts. At the same time, the administration was bolstering the military capacity of regional partners such as Saudi Arabia in an effort to transfer some of the security burden from Washington. Despite Biden’s early reluctance to do business with Riyadh — whose leadership U.S. intelligence believes was responsible for the 2018 killing of the Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi — the president prioritized a deal to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. In pursuing the deal, the United States was willing to offer significant incentives to both sides while mostly ignoring the Palestinian issue.